


Bow and Bend

by MissjuliaMiriam



Series: Willow [1]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: Angst, Drug Addiction, Drug Withdrawal, Dubious Consent, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Identity Issues, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Kidnapping, M/M, Male Friendship, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Rape, Recovery, Slavery, Submission
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-09
Updated: 2015-07-08
Packaged: 2018-03-22 00:41:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 14
Words: 42,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3708803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissjuliaMiriam/pseuds/MissjuliaMiriam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fenris is not a slave any more, but he has known little enough else that sometimes he finds himself slipping into old patterns, wandering down old paths. There's nothing wrong with that. He's free now, and he knows it. But maybe she doesn't.</p><p>Alternatively: </p><p>After an argument with Hawke, Fenris falls into the clutches of a Tevinter magister once more. This time, however, he finds it a little harder to save himself, and old friends are a few too many steps behind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Fight

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, so, this isn't going to be happy. I've been referring to it as The Sad Fenris Fic, if that gives you any idea. I promise it will be okay eventually, just... it might be a while until we get there, so prepare yourselves.
> 
> This fic is a work in progress. I have the first three chapters written, and I'll be posting weekly. I have no idea how long it's going to be. I will do my absolute best not to fail at finishing this, but you are guaranteed at least three chapters, and I do WANT to finish it. So. We'll see.

The earliest days with Hawke are not easy by any definition of the word. The woman is a mage and proud to be so- the last time Fenris saw so much casual use of magic was in the Imperium, and frankly it is not a comforting reminder. He flinches away from every wave of Hawke's hands, holds himself tense and silent, but it's impossible to disengage completely. Because she is beautiful and charismatic and _gentle_. No one has ever been gentle with Fenris before; he is, to most people, either a dog to be kicked or a sharp blade to be handled with care. But she treats him like a person, and he cannot hold himself entirely distant. She threw him off his guard right at the start, and he is never quiet able to regain himself.

He does his best. He is prickly and tense, he starts fights with her pet abomination, he bristles when her boundless compassion slides too close to pity for his comfort. He knows she pities slaves, and he uses that to hold back, to keep his armour strong, to keep her from seeing his soft underbelly. But she slides her slender fingers through the cracks, and he _wants_. That is his downfall; it is the downfall of all slaves. Once there is something in the world you want, you cannot pull away, not fully. Wanting is a poison, one he had thought himself inured to by his tenure as Danarius's pet, but apparently his immunity is not complete. That is the beginning, or perhaps the end.

Fenris barely realizes that he is flirting with Hawke until he is in deep, fascinated by the woman and her kindness, and he cannot draw back. Not even if he wanted to. (He does not want to.) Because Hawke has given him so much- friends, near family, and a home, and she has given him words for the first time in his life. Nothing Fenris has ever known is as intimate as learning to read, with Hawke's quiet voice helping him gently along as he stumbles and sounds out words that he has been speaking with confidence all his life. It's as if he is learning all over again what language really is, what it truly means to _communicate_ , and really, he knows, this is why slaves are not made literate: so that they do not know that they have a voice.

That is why Fenris goes to bed with Hawke, in the end. Because it was Hawke who gave Fenris his voice all over again. Fenris is his own man, he can make his own choices, and it is not gratitude that makes him eager and hungry.

His sleep is poor. He dreams, faces, flashes of voices and images that he has never seen before. Red hair, sparks dancing from a young girl's fingers, a flare of pride. Slender hands with aged skin pulling dark hair back from his face and binding it into a tail, a woman's low voice murmuring Elvhen into his ear, the smell of honeysuckle and cinnamon. Srowd oil staining his fingers, an unfamiliar blade in his hands, the feeling of an opponent's nose breaking beneath his fist as a brawl rages around him. He wakes rattled and gasping, clawing for the memories. They seep away, like sand through his fingers, and he sits in Hawke's bed and tries not to sob. He has never felt so empty.

Fenris cannot stay naked and vulnerable beneath the blood red of Hawke's sheets, and rises, and dresses himself. Armour, weapons, his whole kit. It gives him the distance he needs. He settles at the foot of the bed, considers sitting, ends up kneeling. It is familiar. He wants to retch; here he is once again, kneeling beside the bed of a mage once more, the carnal scent of their love still lingering in the air. He thinks about running. It would be so easy; he knows he wants to. He could tell Hawke that it has all been too much, that remembering and then forgetting again burned him and left him cold, and he cannot stay and live that again. That he cannot be this again.

The truth, though, that lingers at the back of Fenris's mind, is that he _can_ be this. If Hawke had been a magister in the Imperium, had won him or bought him or earned him, he would have never pulled at her leash. He would have followed her anywhere, served her eagerly, done anything to please her. Hawke deserves that from him. She deserves his best, his everything. So he stands and he strips away his armour, places his sword back on the chest where it had come to rest hours before, and slides back under the covers. Her bed is warm, and she is soft and alive in his arms, and she smells like rain and nutmeg.

(Looking at her face, half-shadowed in the fading firelight, warm and soft with sleep, is terrifying and exhilarating. He wants to make this woman happy so desperately.)

After that, it's easier. Fenris finds he can fit parts of himself that have felt disjointed since he first fled his master back together. Once, he was nothing but a slave, constructed from pain and pleasure given and taken when Danarius decided, and that defined his whole identity. But no more. Fenris has pieces that are entirely his own now: his body, his mind, his soul. Some things have lingered. Some have been lost. But he finds the cracks are full now, full of Hawke's blue gaze, and her laugh, and the warmth in his chest when he looks at her. Devotion is as easy as he remembers.

 

Marian loves Fenris, but sometimes she's afraid for him. She's not sure what flipped a switch in Fenris's brain that reminded him that he should obey, but more and more after they first went to bed together Marian notices things that are... not right. It's subtle things, at first: something in the way Fenris looks at her, maybe; the way Fenris speaks; the place he chooses to stand when they go out together. Always at her heel, at her left, just a few paces behind. A well-trained dog. And the way he looks for Marian's smiles, is so desperate for affection and touch in a way he wasn't before. That's strange. That's a sort of openness that she had never expected, though it's not unwelcome. Just... strange.

Then it's less subtle. The first time Fenris asks Marian for permission to do something it's not something that's bothersome. In fact, he doesn't even really ask, usually, though sometimes he does. He'll look at her with a question in his eyes, on his face, or else he'll murmur a quiet, "May I?" He never asks about the important things- sleeping, eating, fighting. But he will sometimes look when he has a man at his mercy in battle, and if Marian nods, the man will die. Or not, if she frowns. This is not something Fenris used to do. Just like he would never look askance at her before asking Bodahn or Orana for something. Or look to her for permission before taking initiative when they're intimate together.

Not even the asking permission makes Marian pull away, though. It bothers her- she doesn't know why Fenris is doing it, why he's treating her like- like she'd become his master somewhere in the act of taking him to bed. It bothers her that Fenris is looking for approval and permission, that he is running errands for her even when he doesn't need to, even when he isn't asked. (To Marian's shame, she takes advantage of that for a while without realizing it. When she does realize, she stops asking Fenris to run messages to the Hanged Man, to go to the markets, to do anything. Does that stop Fenris from offering, or doing it without asking? No. But she cannot shake the feeling that Fenris does these things not because he _wants_ to, but because he thinks it's what _she_ wants.)

It doesn't bother Marian that Fenris stops lying to her. That Fenris wants her love so desperately. These are things that she enjoys and feels only a little guilty about. She does love Fenris, and it's so nice to feel so very wanted. To have someone who will always lean into her touch, no matter what kind of day it's been, or whose blood she's covered in. It's nice to have someone who will always tell her the truth, and will always tell her he loves her with a sort of desperate earnestness, as if he needs her to believe him. Marian likes that. Maybe it's wrong, but she likes it. She likes Fenris letting her get away with it when she just _doesn't want to talk_ , and falls silent for hours upon hours, even though it's stupid and petulant and neglectful. She likes that Fenris always agrees to come with her to the Hanged Man, even when she can see that he doesn't really want to; that he stays if her asks even when he's upset with her and has a desire to run etched into every line of his body. She likes that Fenris will do almost anything she asks when they're in bed today, will give her pleasure even when he's not aroused, and has very little concern for his own release. It's wrong. It's wrong. Marian likes it anyway.

When Marian realizes what she's doing, _really_ what she's doing, she stops. Because one day she finds herself scolding Fenris like he's a child, and though Fenris looks a bit petulant, he hasn't taken his wrist from her harsh grip, and he hasn't said anything to defend himself, even though she knows (and he _should know_ ) that she's being unfair. Anders was just as much at fault as Fenris, but Anders would fight back. Fenris has just... stopped. Not entirely, not all that time- when he's really riled up or Marian gets confrontational (which is rare, she tends toward disappointment more than anger), he does defend himself, but this kind of quiet, stern reprimand is just _taken_.

"Why do you let me treat you like this?" Marian says, cutting herself off mid-sentence. She barely recognizes her own voice.

"Like what?" Fenris asks.

" _Like a slave_."

Fenris tenses. Tenses, pulls back, and yes, that is what she wanted. She needs Fenris to stand up for himself. "I'm not a slave," Fenris says.

"But you act like it, sometimes," Marian says. She's realizing the truth of it even as she says it. She thinks about Fenris running errands, Fenris making himself constantly available to Marian's every whim, Fenris begging silently for her approval, Fenris asking permission. Fenris, Fenris, Fenris. Everything he has said or done since they first went to bed together, and it just seems worse and worse the more she thinks about it. She was only half-aware before of her own guilty conscience.

"I-" Fenris stops. "I'm not a slave," he says again. "I am not _your slave_ , Hawke."

"No," Marian says, and steps away. "You're not."

Then she turns her back. Fenris is silent for a moment, and then he says, "I will never be your slave, Hawke."

"Good." Marian is talking to the wall. She can't look at Fenris without remembering the way Fenris looks at her. _Servile_. And so beautiful.

"That doesn't mean I don't want to be good for you."

She tenses. "I don't want you to- to be good for me. I want you to be good for you."

"I just want you to be happy." Fenris's armour creaks, like he's shifted on his feet. Rare. Rare that he would be so discomfited as to shift around. He's usually so still. Something Danarius trained into him, surely. It's not natural.

"I don't want you to do things just to make me happy!" Marian whirls on Fenris, and realizes that she's shouted at him again. She softens her voice, steps closer. Fenris is so tense, so unhappy-looking.

"But I _want to_ , Hawke. Marian. I love you, is it wrong for me to want to do things for you?"

Marian swallows, blinks. "No. But- you were a slave, Fenris, and I can't- I can't ever be okay with putting you in that position. I won't ever be your master."

Fenris is so quiet. He looks down at his feet. "I'm sorry."

"Don't fucking apologize!"

The profanity makes Fenris startle, flinch. She rarely swears. "Why are you so angry?" Fenris asks quietly. Almost pleading. It sours Marian's mood further. She does not want to be pleaded with.

"I can't do this to you, Fenris. I can't. You need to stop _serving_ me. Stop asking for permission, silently or otherwise, stop _making yourself available_ all the time. Say no! Lie to me! Make me stop when I'm being unfair, or touching you when your marks hurt- I know they do, I've seen you move like an old man some days, and I've seen you flinch away from Isabela and Varric and _everyone but me_. That's not okay."

"Why not?" Fenris demands. Some fire has come into him, and he meets Marian's eyes. "Why shouldn't I let you do want you want? I know you like the things I do. You like me. And now you're saying I should just stop?"

"Yes!"

"I'm not a slave, Hawke!"

"You say that!" She steps forward, right into Fenris's space. "You say that and you don't act like it, Fenris. You act like a slave, and I want you to stop."

"I'm not a slave!"

"Yes, you are!"

And there it is. Hanging between them, and Fenris's green eyes are wide with hurt, and Marian draws back like she's lost control of her magic and burned herself, burned everything. It's not true, she wants to say. She doesn't think Fenris is a slave. But it can be so hard to separate the slave from the free man when the free man insists on serving, and sometimes it seems like the part of Fenris that is- was a slave is the most dominant part. It makes her sick and afraid.

"I'm not," Fenris whispers, and then he turns and runs.

 


	2. Flight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Space is not always the answer.
> 
> Alternatively, "oh, shit, a plot."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> MAY I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION PLEASE. THIS NOTE IS KIND OF IMPORTANT, AND I ASK THAT YOU READ IT AND TAKE IT INTO ACCOUNT.
> 
> I feel obliged to inform all readers at this junction that the phrase I keep using when I'm talking to people about this story is "It's going to get worse before it gets better." And then I cackle evilly, but that's not the point. The point is, I'm going to update the tags to reflect some of the stuff that's going to go down in this story, and I would advise that people pay attention to those tags and to trigger warnings in the Notes at the start of each chapter. (Please note that I'm not going to edit out potential triggers to avoid upsetting anyone. I'll warn for content; from there avoiding triggers is up to you.)
> 
> This story is not a happy one, and it's going to stay unhappy for a while. I don't want anyone to feel ambushed by that. So, if you're not a person who enjoys angst, now's the time to back out.
> 
> Please enjoy the chapter, and I do hope you stick around.

The manor that was once Danarius's used to be a safe haven, of sorts. A hollowed out echo of grandeur, the sort of thing that, in its prime, had been Fenris's home. Years ago. Years upon years, he had served in halls like these ones, but those halls had been clean and empty of blood and dead flesh, and they had smelled like fresh air and not dust. The derelict remains of that had been a viciously satisfying thing: look, this institution is crumbling, and your chains are rusted. You are free, Liberati. Fly home.

But Fenris has no home that is not winged and tawny and bright-eyed, with a sharp beak and claws that tear at his heart. He has not slept here in a long time. Hawke hadn't liked it- said he deserved better, offered him a place at his side. But that is gone now, because Fenris is a broken thing, just like all the other broken things in this mausoleum. He cannot be anything but what he is. _He is not a slave_.

That's not enough.

Fenris knows that he has slipped back into his old ways, a little. If he had cared to, he could have resisted. Could have taught himself all over again how to be a person, how to be free, and made resistance to any sort of submission his nature. He's a person meant for molding. But he had not wanted to. It felt good to serve Hawke, at least a little. It felt good to give love and know that that love was desired and well-received, not taken as due and discarded as worthless. It felt good to be there, to make himself into a thing that would make Hawke happy. All he wants, even now, is for Hawke to be happy. But Hawke thinks he is a slave, and Fenris knows that to Hawke a slave is a crawling thing, due pity and nothing else. It wears the mask of compassion, kindness, because Hawke is compassionate and kind. It is still pity. Beneath it all, pity. Fenris does not want it.

 _Could you love this thing that I am?_ He wants to go to Hawke and ask, throw himself at her feet and beg to be forgiven, but that will make it worse, not better. Nothing could make this better- Hawke has seen below the armour and Fenris cannot take it back. Cannot rehide the soft edges, make them hard and razor-sharp again. He could not cut Hawke, not even to defend himself. He's lost that capacity along with his heart, his loyalty, everything that prevented him from being inexorably bound. His chains were never broken. Will never _be_ broken.

Fenris curls up in a dusty bed, covered with moth-eaten sheets. He leaves his armour on, in hopes that it will protect him from the cold that drafts in through cracks in the stonework. Kirkwall is always cold. He wears armour every moment that he is not with Hawke, and Fenris does not think that any of his friends ( _he has friends, do you see, a slave does not have friends only a master only those I would sell out for a little more love another day without pain and certainly freedom if it was offered)_ know that here in the south he is always cold. Except in Hawke's bed, where nothing cold or dark or damp can touch him.

Fenris sleeps. When he wakes, there are salt-sticky trails on his face, and he scrubs them away and gets up and faces the sun. This is not the end.

 

Fenris goes to the Hawke Estate, knows that Hawke will likely be there. But she is not- she had left the previous night, Orana tells him. So he goes to the Hanged Man. Varric is there, and tells him that Hawke has taken Merrill and Anders and Isabela and gone hunting bandits, which. Fenris sits down, hard.

"Had a fight?" Varric asks, sounding entertained.

"Hawke thinks of me as a slave," Fenris replies blankly. Varric recoils.

"She wouldn't-"

"Not as her slave," Fenris corrects. He knows what conclusion Varric has drawn, but no, not that. That would have been preferable, in a way. "She said that I act like a slave. Which- is true."

Varric frowns. "That's not true at all," he says.

"It is. I want to serve her, I want to kneel and be worshipful and be praised for doing well. I wish she would hit me when I did wrong so that I would _know_ \- so much is uncertain at times. I am learning, but- Varric, do you understand what it means that I remember nothing before Danarius? I was never a whole person. I have learned everything I know about being real from watching others, and for a long time I had no good examples."

Varric looks surprised. Fenris only rarely speaks so much. He is aware of his own taciturn nature, and this is more than he has shown to any of them. Even Hawke. So he falls silent again and waits for his friend to respond.

"You're real, Fenris," Varric says, eventually. His voice is unbearably gentle. It aches, like probing fingers pressed to a day-old bruise. "You're as real, as whole as any of us. Don't even doubt it."

"I don't," Fenris murmurs. "But Hawke does, and I cannot bear her pity or her discomfort. I am what I am. Is it so terrible that I want to serve?"

"No," Varric says. "Just- you learned to be that way under a harsh hand. It's hard on Hawke to have to deal with that side of you, because she knows that it's not organic, like your humour or your anger. Those things are totally yours, but the part of you that wants to- to submit, or whatever- that part came from someone else. It's learned."

"I know."

"Is it so hard to understand, then?"

"No." Fenris sighs. "But Hawke will want me to want to unlearn. She'll want me to discard that part of me because it makes her unhappy. I've seen the guilt in her before, but she never said anything."

"You don't want to change yourself to suit her," Varric says, and shrugs. "It seems to me that that's more real than anything. You're not a slave, Fenris. Just tell her the truth. She'll surprise you."

"Maybe," Fenris says. He rolls his shoulders, letting misery slide away. "I'm not a slave, Varric."

"No, Broody, you're not," Varric says, and his voice is gentle again, but this time it does not hurt.

 

Fenris waits for Hawke to return. There is no word for days, and though he worries, and wants to be waiting for her when she comes home, he cannot bear the stillness any more. He catches a rumour of slavers operating in a copse off the road not far from the city, and he tells Varric that he's going hunting. The dwarf looks concerned, but accepts it when Fenris says he wants no company- Fenris wants to be alone, to work off some aggression and be free of the oppressive heaviness that possesses him within the bounds of the city.

He takes his sword, his armour, a whetstone and a cloth, and three days worth of rations, and nothing else. There's little point- he can sleep just as comfortably on the ground as he can in a bed, and he knows how to build a shelter if it rains. He doesn't tell anyone but Varric he's going. No point. He sets out early in the morning, and by that evening he has reached the stretch of road where the rumour lead him, and he hauls himself up into a tree off the road to rest and keep and eye out for unsavoury folks crawling out of the woods.

No one comes, not even after the sun sets, so Fenris eats dinner and resolves to search the woods in the morning. He'll have to be careful without any backup, but he has no desire to trek back to Kirkwall, not just yet anyway. Whether he finds anything or not, he's going to spend at least three days away, and if Hawke gets back first, then she can damn well wait for _him_ to return, and maybe learn how he feels when she gallivants off without him all the time.

The thought sits bitter and heavy at the back of his mind, and Fenris curls himself up tightly, wedged securely in a tree branch. He knows his dreams will be bad, and hopes that he will at least stay quiet, lest he attract bears as he sleeps. At least here, so far from home and Hawke's warmth, he will sleep lightly at best.

Fenris closes his eyes and forces himself to sleep. He wakes a few hours later to a strange swish, and then a loop of well-made rope falls around his throat and is jerked tight. He tries to phase through it, but cannot. He struggles, secure enough in his position that he does not fall, but he cannot loosen the loop enough and tumbles backward from the tree rather than let himself choke. He protects his head as he falls, and lands hard. He barely keeps hold of his sword, and his small bag of provisions is left behind. The foliage above him is thick and the light of the moon is obscured, but he flares his marks, illuminating his assailants.

Six men, all but one taller than Fenris, all but two broader. The smallest is the only one who does not flinch away from the sudden light, and he is the one who darts forward, quick as thought, and lashes out at Fenris with a dagger in hand. Fenris defends himself, hampered by the rope still tight around his throat and his sleep-dampened reflexes, but soon the man holding his leash jerks on it, disrupting Fenris enough that the little rogue with the dagger is able to slice at Fenris's wrist, forcing his hand open in a spasm. His sword thuds to the ground, and the rogue snatches it up and flees. Fenris lunges after him, his lyrium brands glowing, but cannot catch him before another loop of rope falls around him, this time catching around his biceps and cinching tight. He manages to loosen it a little, but it only slips down a bit before tightening again at the man's tug. Another loop falls around him, then another, until he is bound all around his upper body, his arms held tight against his side, and the loop around is throat is tight enough that he is struggling for breath. Try as he might, he cannot phase out, and he wonders how long this trap has been set for him.

“Don't choke him,” the little rogue calls to the man holding the rope around Fenris's throat. Fenris glares at him, his vision dark at the edges from lack of air. He does not think he has enough breath to speak.

“I was paid a pretty penny to catch you, elf,” the rogue says to Fenris, then. Fenris struggles in his bonds, but cannot get free, not with five men holding tight to the ropes and his weapon gone. “We thought you'd never take the bait.”

“Fuck you,” Fenris hisses, with what little breath he has. He usually swears in Tevene around Hawke, but the trade language curses can be so much more satisfying. The rogue laughs, and then circles Fenris to kick his knees from under him. He drops hard to the forest floor, and when the rogue circles around again and kicks Fenris again, this time across the face, he is only able to stay upright because of the ropes holding him steady. The rogue is strong, and strikes with merciless precision. Augmented, maybe.

“I've got a little medicine for you,” the rogue sneers, and then he pulls another dagger from his boots and stabs Fenris in the shoulder. Fenris grunts, tensing, and glares harder. “You'll be feeling that in a moment, and then we'll be on our way.”

Fenris almost tries to ask him what he's on about, and then he feels the tingle, beginning at the wound in his shoulder, numbing it, and spreading rapidly through his body. Poison on the blade of the dagger. It could have been delivered another way, he thinks hazily, but the rogue is clearly a sadist. Wonderful. Then the poisons overtakes him and he slumps into unconsciousness.

 

Marian is gone from Kirkwall for nine days, fighting bandits along the coast. Her companions can surely tell that she's in a mood, but she has not chosen to elucidate them as to the cause. She's stewing, angry and guilty and upset, not sure how to feel. She knows she's hurt Fenris desperately, but she cannot change how she feels- she cannot change what she knows. He treats her like she's his master, and it makes her skin crawl to think of how long she let it go on. She wouldn't let him reduce himself in an attempt to please her, no matter how well he succeeded. Her harsh words had been a step too far, but maybe it would be enough to snap him out of it. To make him realize that what he'd been doing was not what she wanted. All she wants is him, the truest him, not a slave.

Returning to Kirkwall with a trail of bloodstained justice behind her makes her feel better, but she knows she needs to speak with Fenris. She needs to apologize, to explain her reaction. Hopefully he would understand, and would explain his own part- she had never indicated that she wanted him to act that way, had she? And if not, why would he do it? She can't wrap her head around it.

So, she sees Anders safely back to the clinic in Darktown, and goes with Isabela and Merrill to the Hanged Man to check in with Varric, before going back to Hightown to find Fenris. He'd be lurking around his manner, surely.

Varric greets them warmly, but his eyes on Marian are shrewd, and she knows Fenris had gone to him. What had he said, she wonders? But she knows Varric would not tell her. Still, she pulls him aside before she leaves.

“Have you spoken to Fenris?” she asks.

“Yeah, Broody came to talk to me,” Varris says. “Told me about an interesting conversation you two had.”

“I want to apologize,” Marian says, and means it.

“You'd better,” Varris says. “But do you know what you're apologizing for? Because I think you've misunderstood something.”

Marian stares at him. “I said awful things to him, and I've been- I've been _using_ him. It's wrong.”

Varric hums. “You're thinking about it wrong. It's not something I can tell you, though. You need to hear it from him.”

Hawke nods, a little hesitant. “I'm going to find him right now.”

“You'e not going to have much luck,” Varric says, and Marian blinks.

“What?”

“He left town yesterday morning, hunting slavers off the road. Before you ask, yes, by himself. He couldn't wait around for you anymore, needed to get him head on straight. He'll be back in a few days- _don't go after him,_ ” Varric says. He speaks the last works emphatically, and though Marian hates it, she listens. She needs to give Fenris his independence.

She goes home, greets Orana with a kind of uncomfortable self-consciousness, Fenris fully on her mind, and asks for a bath. While she waits for the hot water, she putters around in her bedroom. Her covers are neat, but if she tries she can see them rumpled and warm, the imprint of Fenris's body still there in memorial of their lovemaking. She loves having him in her bed, where she can spread him out and admire him, let him love her and love him in return. He's good with his hands and his mouth, and she loves to praise him. He always reacts like a cat that's being stroked, arching like her tender tender words are a physical touch.

Her mouth twists. He reacts like a slave that's pleased his master, she realizes now. He does everything he does because he wants her praise, and she has no idea whether he gets any real pleasure from what they do together. He gets off, certainly, but sometimes he waits until she begs him for it, or until she tells him to. She'd never thought. She's never felt like such an idiot, for not realizing sooner.

Orana arrives with hot water, and Marian helps her fill the large copper tub. Bathing is a luxury, but Marian will always take advantage of it- she hates feeling dirty, or at least she does once she's home, and feeling clean is an option. Even after washing, though, she doesn't feel as clean as she wishes, and she knows it is the weight of her guilt sitting on her skin like grime. She can't wait until Fenris gets back.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you didn't read the Notes at the start of the chapter, please scroll back up and do so.
> 
> Reviews and kudos are always welcome.


	3. Slip

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the chapter where drugs become a thing. Also, you'll note that I'm actually adding tags a few chapters ahead of where they become relevant, except in cases where it's a major spoiler (character tags in particular will only be updated as I go along, For Reasons). This is to keep me on track, mostly; I have five chapters written (including those posted) and have been writing about a chapter a week.

Fenris is only intermittently conscious in the next few days. Whatever poison the rogue gave him, it lasts in his system, or maybe they're renewing the dose. Whatever the reason, he cannot hold onto awareness. It slips through his fingers, and he lives in darkness.

When he wakes properly, it is with a taste like death in his mouth and every part of his body screaming agony. He moans and tries to move, but only gets a short distance before someone delivers a vicious kick to his ribs and he has to curl up, trying to soothe the pain. It doesn't help. Staying still, however, prevents further kicking, so he commits to that instead.

“Open your eyes, slave,” a voice demands. Rough, male. Not one he recognizes. He checks his memory briefly- the rogue, the dagger, the ropes. How long ago that was he cannot guess.

He opens his eyes. He is lying on dirty ground in a clearing, somewhere in the middle of the woods. There's a fire at the centre of the clearing. Across it, watching him, are two women with long, dirty hair, and three large men. All have hostile expressions and rough clothing.

He chances a glance up. Another man stands above him, this one with blue eyes and a neat haircut. He is cleaner than any of the others, wearing nicer clothing. The rogue stands behind him, a smirk on his thin face.

“Eyes down,” the man commands. Fenris fights the instinct to obey, and stares defiantly into the man's eyes. Blue, so blue. Like Hawke's, almost exactly. It makes him ache, or it would if he were not aching already.

“You've become defiant in your time away,” the man says, and he sounds more amused than irritated. Fenris feels something fearful clench inside him. The magisters who were amused by disobedience were always more amused by punishment, too. “I'll have time to grind it out of you.”

“I'm not a slave anymore,” Fenris spits. “I will not go back to Danarius that easily.”

“Oh, I know you ran away from your master. I have no intention of returning you to him. Rather, I want you as my own, as a lesson to him on how to keep hold of one's property,” the man says. His tone is mild. Almost kind. Fenris's capture is about politics, not about revenge, or wealth, or anything else. But the man's tone is smooth and full of promised pain; Fenris knows this. He may not be angry at Fenris, but that does not mean Fenris will not suffer.

“I'll never serve you,” Fenris grits out, and the man only laughs and kicks out carelessly. His boots connects with Fenris's ribs, which are already bruised, and knocks all the air from Fenris's lungs.

“We'll see,” the man says, with the air of a promise, and he leaves Fenris in the tender care of the rogue. The rogue only sneers at him, and then leans down and tips a few drops from a vial into the open wound in Fenris's shoulder. It shouldn't work, but that delivery of the poison is enough to throw Fenris back into the black haze, and he loses all sense of the world once more.

 

Marian misses Fenris. She misses him on her first day back, and on the second day, and on the third. On the fourth day, she goes to see Varric, and he tells her that really Fenris should have been back. She can't yet discount that he's still out there, sulking in some wood somewhere, however, and so she does not panic just yet.

On the sixth day, she panics. Fenris has been gone too long- he hates to travel with a large pack, and never brings more than five days worth of rations with him unless she informs him that they'll be gone for more than a week. She throws on her robes, grabs her staff, and hurries down to the Hanged Man. Varric is waiting for her, Merrill, Anders, and Aveline with him.

“I figured you'd come,” he says, grimly. “I'm coming with you.”

Marian nods, though him tagging along on their adventures is uncommon at best. “If you want,” she says. “Do you know where he went?”

“He was following some rumour of slavers off the road. It was a day's travel to the place at most, so unless he staked out their camp and hasn't had an opportunity to strike, this isn't normal.”

Marian nods again, and gestures for them to follow. Anders looks grumpy, and she considers telling him off, but she knows that no matter what she says he'll never like Fenris, never feel charitable toward him. Fenris is too vocal in his hatred of mages.

“I've got rations for you,” Merrill tells Marian, and she nods gratefully.

“I didn't even think of it,” she admits, and Merrill smiles at her.

“I thought so,” she says. “I'm worried too. He'll be okay.”

Marian sighs. “I know.”

They travel mostly in silence after that. Anders and Aveline chat idly about the affairs of the city; Varric and Merrill strike up the occasional conversation about... trees. Or something. In all honesty, Marian isn't paying much attention; she's too consumed by her anxiety to do anything but think about Fenris. The look on his face when she called him a slave and bound him back up in every terrible thing he'd ever fought to free himself from. He'd run off chasing slavers by himself to escape that, and now he could be hurt, or captured, or, Maker forbid, dead. She could barely think it.

The reach the copse that Varric said had spawned the rumour Fenris was chasing. It's late, but Marian insists they press on into the woods, to search for any sign. All is quiet, peaceful in the fading light of the day, and their footsteps were loud in the underbrush. Birds call and flutter in the foliage, and squirrels chase their tails up trees. It seems too idyllic for the dreadful feeling that Marian is so full of.

Finally, Merrill calls out. “Here!” she says, and Marian turns to see her up a tree, perched in the branches with a sack in her hand. “Rations, and a whetstone and cloth.”

The exact contents of a bag Fenris might carry. But where is he?

“How many days' worth?” Varric asks, and catches the bag when Merrill tosses it down to him. She scurries down after it.

“Maybe two days?” she says. “It's been in that tree a while, I think.”

Varric nods, inspecting the bag. “This definitely is Fenris's whetstone,” he says, and turns it so that they all can see the rough shape of a bird, wings outstretched, scratched into one side of it. Marian has to choke back tears.

“So, where is he?” Aveline asks, exactly as Marian had just been wondering.

“Mm,” Merrill says. “That's a little harder.” She looks around, then something on the ground catches her attention. She kneels, and then looks up, something haunted in her eye.

“What is it?” Marian asks.

“I was never a good hunter,” Merrill says, sounding a little desperate. “I might be wrong, but- this looks like blood.”

Marian goes to her knees next to Merrill and stares at the ground. She can't be sure in the darkness, but yes, there is something darkening some of the ground below their feet. A short distance away, something else catches Marian's eye, a glint of metal below a bush.

“There,” she says, and scrambles up, going over to look.

Varric is with her, and when fear freezes her, he's the one who reaches below the bush and slowly, so slowly, draws out a familiar blade. Fenris's sword, lying forgotten in the brush.

“No,” Marian says. Her voice is very far away.

“His body would be here if he were dead,” Aveline says, and contrary to her blunt tone, she come over and places a gentle hand on Marian's shoulder. “He must have been taken.”

“Slavers,” Varric says, and spits. He's still holding Fenris's sword. It's almost as long as he is tall, but he seems not to struggle with the weight.

“Who would have taken him?” Merrill asks quietly, fearfully.

“His old master,” Anders suggests. “He always seemed pretty sure the man'd be back for him.”

“It doesn't matter,” Aveline says. “We have to find him.”

Marian nods. “We-”

“Can't start tracking them now,” Varric cuts in. “It's dark. Daisy is the only one of us who knows how to track through the wilderness, and as she just reminded us, she's a bit of an amateur. We'll need the daylight.”

“We can't delay,” Marian says. “Every minute they get further from us.”

“They have to sleep some time,” Varric points out. “I want to find him just as much as you do- remember, I'm the one who let him come out here alone. But we'll start looking in the morning.”

The others are nodding, and as much as Marian hates it, she sighs and gives in. They make camp a short distance from the tree where Merrill found Fenris's bag, hoping to avoid disrupting the trail, whatever there might be of one. Marian sleeps poorly, and in the morning, the atmosphere of their camp is glum.

“They won't be travelling on the roads,” Varric says. “Kidnapping isn't legal here, and neither is slavery.”

“You can track them through the brush,” Aveline says. “I don't know that I can stay- I have responsibilities, and this jaunt may take time.”

Marian looks at the others, considers, and then nods. “Go. It's fine- we'll find him and come home as soon as we can.”

Aveline nods, and offers to take Fenris's sword home so that they don't have to carry it. Marian hesitates, but she lets the other woman take it. They cannot carry it with them, not and travel with any practicality, but Marian is loath to let go of any part of Fenris now that she knows he is truly missing, and not simply late.

Merrill picks up a trail mercifully quickly. The slavers weren't being subtle in their travel- there are at least five in their party, and Merrill quietly says as they go along, following broken branches and footsteps in dew-dampened loam, that there are times when she thinks they may have simply dragged an unconscious body behind them, rather than carrying it.

They find the remains of a fire a few hours away from sunset, and it cheers them. They are travelling more swiftly than the slavers if they are finding their camps before they themselves must camp. A few hours after that, they break out of the copse and find a stretch of open plains ahead of them, with another copse in the distance. The field is quickly traversed, and they camp on the edge of the second copse. Marian cannot call her mood cheerful, but she and the others are at least hopeful, and Varric spins an absurd tale before the campfire that night before they go to bed. It cheers her up, and she sleeps better. She dreams of Fenris, and wakes praying that where ever he is, he is okay.

 

The days fall into routine. Fenris does not know how many hours he spends in darkness, but from time to time he surfaces, and then has the chance to spar verbally with the blue-eyed man. Fenris cannot quite figure out how many slavers there are, beside the rogue who seems to lead their company, and the two women. The men are all similar-looking, and his mind is often too hazy to pin down the details of their appearances. There are always different numbers of them in his line of sight when he wakes, but never more than five, which makes him think that there are at most seven or eight of them. Plus the blue-eyed man and the rogue.

The blue-eyed man never speaks harshly to Fenris. He never fails to call him “slave”, but he does not call him even something so offensive as “knife-ear”, never mind any of the other epithets have have been applied to Fenris over the years. He will sometimes kneel beside Fenris's prone form and tuck his hair away from his face, touch his cheek, look at him with a covetous light in his eye. So long as Fenris stays quiet and still, he does not hit him, and though Fenris knows he should resist, he is in constant pain and cannot bring himself to add to it solely for the sake of resistance. The gentle touches are too good in the absence of all other contact. Sometimes the blue-eyed man will stand over Fenris and wait for him to speak up, meet his eyes in defiance, anything, and then he will kick Fenris in the ribs, or grid his bootheel against Fenris's knuckles. Never enough to break them, but enough to hurt, to leave livid bruises on Fenris's skin.

Fenris will sometimes wake to a tugging on the lyrium under his skin. Always in the evenings, and never much, but the blue-eyed man uses the lyrium to purify water for drinking, or to light the fire. It's horrifying how quickly Fenris gets used to the sensation, when he had forgotten it. Danarius had used the lyrium much more often than he had used Fenris's blood for his magic. Fenris wonder absently if the blue-eyed man knows that he can use the lyrium to cause pain, or if he only knows how to use it to boost his abilities. He does not intend to tell the man, if he does not know. He hopes he does not know.

“Someone is tracking us,” the man says, one day. “They'll not catch us. Not in time.”

Today is a quiet, gentle day. Fenris lies stiff, holding himself back from leaning into the man's touch. He trails his fingers down Fenris's neck, then places his hand on Fenris's chest and slides his thumb against his collarbone. “You are quite lovely,” the man murmurs. “I understand why Danarius valued you, never mind that you have a fortune in lyrium buried beneath your skin.”

Fenris feels himself tensing further at the words. Danarius had called Fenris beautiful, had used him not only for protection and a symbol of status. Fenris hadn't learned the word  _rape_ until long after he escaped Danarius's clutches.

“I'm going to dose you and take you to the river,” the blue-eyed man says. This is a change, and Fenris is already so tense he feels like he's about to snap. He cannot tense further. “You should be clean.”

He draws a vial from his robes, but it contains a red liquid; the poison is a dark greenish-brown. He unstoppers it carefully, and places his thumb against the lip, then tips it so that the liquid touches his skin. When he tips it back and removes his thumb, there is a drop of reddish liquid clinging to it. He leans in and with one hand turns Fenris's head so that he's facing the man, his hand firm on Fenris's jaw, and then without warning he slides his thumb between Fenris's lips. Fenris bites the man's thumb hard enough to make him bleed. He tastes something spicy on his tongue beneath the metallic taste of blood, and the man snatches his hand back and forces Fenris's jaw closed before he can spit.

The blue-eyed man slaps Fenris hard, his skull bouncing off the ground, and his expression goes stern. “And here you've been so good today. I should have known. Still, you'll be pliant enough in a moment.”

Fenris snarls at him, and spits the moment the man allows him too. It's too late. He feels heat curl in his gut, a feeling not unlike arousal, and then his focus slides, slithering away from anger.

“Ah,” the blue-eyed man says, when Fenris has drifted fully into someplace warm and easy. “Lovely.”

He hauls Fenris up, then, gathering him in his arms. Fenris is still bound hand and foot, but he does not struggle, only buries his face in the man's chest as he strides from the camp. He is not soft like Hawke, Fenris thinks muzzily. But he is warm, and his arms are strong. It's been so long since Fenris has felt warm.

He hears the river before he sees it. It's so simple to sit on the shore and let the blue-eyed man undress him. Eyes like Hawke's. Just like Hawke's, so lovely. He wants to be good for those eyes, and it's easy to forget that this man is not Hawke. When his clothes are gone, he shivers, and he shivers more when the man strips off his own clothes and guides him into the freezing rush of the river. They press close for warmth, and Fenris huddles back into the man with Hawke's eyes, letting him slide his arms around his waist and hold him close. It feels so good to touch. In the cold water, arousal does not stir him as it might otherwise, but he leans back and sighs when the man presses his hot mouth to Fenris's shoulder.

“Let's get you clean,” the man murmurs into Fenris's ear, and Fenris obeys, going to his knees in the water when the man urges him, letting him wet his hair and rub a chunk of soap through it, and then wet it again to get rid of the subs. After that, Fenris applies himself to washing the man with Hawke's eyes, sliding the soap over his skin, washing his hair carefully, trying not to tug.

“You're so good, Fenris,” the man says, when they are back on shore. “You've gone down so easily for me. One day you won't need the drugs any more. Would you like to be able to feel this way whenever you wanted?”

Fenris nods. “It's so easy,” he says. “Thank you.”

“Pretty slave,” the man says. His voice is low, rough, and his tone is intimate. Something about his words sends a frisson of tension down Fenris's spine, but the man's hand follows, soothing him. It comes to rest in the gentle curve of his lower back, fingering the curling lines of lyrium that are there. “So beautiful. I could have you now if I wanted, but it's too early. Too much, too quickly. Soon, though, I'll show you how good you can be.”

Fenris nods, because he wants to be good. Hawke never understood that. She thought- she called him- he shakes his head. Something is buzzing like a bee in his ear, and he blinks. There is how spice and blood in his mouth, and he is shivering in the cold as he dries.

“A shame,” the blue-eyed man sighs. He redresses Fenris quickly, and then binds him tightly. “We'll do this again, pet.”

The blue-eyed man carries Fenris back to camp. He only remembers to struggle when they're already back within sight of the fire, and in response to Fenris's fight the man simply drops him to the ground. Fenris lands flat on his back, and all the air rushes from his lungs. As he lies there, gasping, horror begins to spread from some animal part of his brain, the part that demands agency, that demands that he have control of himself. He had had no control. The blue-eyed man had taken it from him.

"You dropped far and fast," the man tells him, staring down at him from on high. Fenris can tell he's not just taking about the physical drop he just experienced. "You wouldn't have gone so easily if you weren't already submissive, slave. Don't ever forget that."

The worst part is, Fenris knows. He knows what he is. He wishes he  _could_ forget.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor Fenris. Reviews and comments are always welcome.


	4. Curl

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fenris slips further from Hawke's grasp; she realizes.
> 
> AKA, the chapter where shit gets bad, basically. Not that it wasn't already.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I bought a copy of The World of Thedas Vol. 1 yesterday, and realized that my geography is kind of messed up. I did my best to fix it, but travel times, etc. might still be kind of wonky. Hopefully y'all won't mind too much. 
> 
> Alternative summary for this chapter (also this fic, if I'm honest): Sorry, Fenris.
> 
> Dub-con/non-con warning for this chapter. YMMV on how bad it is.

The days do not bleed together; each is excruciatingly defined. Fenris wakes; the blue-eyed man either beats him or gently hand-feeds him, depending on his mood; he is forcibly given a small dose of the red potion; he submits. The man never makes him do anything too heinous: he is ordered to the river and made to wash, or simply to kneel by the man's side and submit to petting, or to strip to the waist and display himself by making a slow performance of the training forms for his sword work, though his sword is long gone. After, as the poison fades from his system, he is often sick. If he keeps himself from retching, the blue-eyed man feeds him, though only a little. If not, he gets to starve. Hunger becomes a living thing within him. He had forgotten how that felt. He is never thirsty, but he is always in pain. The blue-eyed man heals him enough to keep him alive, but lets him bear his bruises and his aches, and only touches the wounds with gentle hands, as if he is sorry for inflicting them. He never tells Fenris what he wants. Fenris does not know what will make the pain stop, and day by day, it breaks him down.

Some days along, the blue-eyed man hands the mercenaries each a small jingling pouch and orders them to carry on the path they've been following. The rogue, their leader, receives a larger pouch, and he grins and says, "Pleasure doing business with you." They take their tents and their things, and the bag which holds Fenris's armour, and they vanish into the forest. Then the blue-eyed man sets off in a different direction, bringing Fenris along with him. Fenris does not ask why. (It has been days since he has spoken without first being drugged into warm submission.) The blue-eyed man deigns to explain, his tone smug and mocking.

"Your rescuers have been hot on our trail," he says. "But the two of us alone are more stealthy than we would be in a group. They will follow the mercenaries, and we will escape. We'll gain the city in a few days, and then they'll never catch us."

Fenris swallows hard, and bows his head. The furious flame that has burned in him since he was captured has been weaker in recent days, and he cannot find any fury at the thought that Hawke will fail, and never find him. He is bitter, certainly. Angry, even. But there is none of the all-consuming fury, none of the thirst for retribution or the fighting instinct that he has clung so tightly to for so long. His captivity has begun to feel inevitable.

"Good boy," the man murmurs, and laces his fingers through Fenris's hair. The touch is gentle, and as he goes, he heals the sore spots on Fenris's skull where it has been thumped against the ground repeatedly since he was taken. Fenris cannot restrain a quiet sound of pleasure as the pain seeps away, and it makes the man smile.

They are in the forest for another four days. They make good time. The blue-eyed man heals Fenris enough that he can walk, and keeps him bound and leashes in the rope that Fenris cannot phase through. Each morning, he draws two vials from his pack and offers Fenris the choice between them: one is brilliantly red, and the other muddy green. Both are poisons, but by now Fenris knows that choosing one will offer him not only hours lost to muzzy darkness, but a severe punishment. Sometimes it is a beating, and other times the man uses magic to leave lines of small burn marks all along Fenris's limbs or his chest, or to shock him with lightning and then laugh as he convulses in the dirt. He has yet to use the lyrium to cause pain; Fenris is sure by now that he doesn't know that he can. The other potion, the red one, slides across his tongue and down his throat, warms his blood like a lover's caress, makes him dizzy and comfortable. It is not unpleasant. He is still sometimes sick after, though. He knows freedom too well to be otherwise.

The city the blue-eyed man mentioned turns out to be more of a town trapped between the edge of the forest and the foothills of the Vimmark Mountains. Fenris isn't sure where they are, exactly, but guesses they have been travelling northwest. There are houses and a few small shops, and an inn, and that is enough for the blue-eyed man's satisfaction. He buys them a room, pays ahead for four nights, and leads Fenris up the stairs. He does not even acknowledge the innkeeper's glances at the rope around Fenris's wrists and throat; no one dares to ask him any questions.

That night, for the first time, the blue-eyed man gives Fenris a second dose of the red potion in a single day. It's a smaller does than usual, and it makes Fenris hazy and warm, but he is not so distant from himself.

"Would you fight me if I laid you out on this bed and fucked you?" the blue-eyed man asks, when he has ordered Fenris to strip out of his shirt and kneel. "If I ordered you to suck my cock?"

Fenris thinks about this, and then says, "I would fight you."

The blue-eyed man reaches out and pinches the tip of one of Fenris's ears harshly, then twists it. The sharp pain makes Fenris gasp and try to pull away, but the man only holds harder. Eventually he stops fighting, and the man releases him.

"Has anyone fucked you since Danarius?"

Fenris nods. "I sold myself several times when I was on the run, before Kirkwall."

"And after you reached Kirkwall?"

Fenris shrugs. He's not sure how to answer the question, and he has discovered by now that the potion demands complete honesty. Not that he's in the mood to lie- he's too relaxed, too warm and easy in himself to feel the need.

"You took a lover?" The look on the man's face says that he knows the answer. Fenris stares up into his eyes, blue like the sky, blue like Hawke's, and nods.

"The woman. The one pursuing us."

Fenris nods again.

"What was her name?"

"Hawke."

"An interesting name for a woman," the man says, sounding interested.

"Hawke is her family name," Fenris says. "Her given name is Marian."

"Lovely," the man murmurs. "Do you know my name, slave?"

Fenris shakes his head.

"Good. Now, are you going to be good, and stay down there, or are will I need to tie you down?"

Fenris says, without hesitation, "I will be good."

 

They catch up to the bastards who caught Fenris almost two weeks after leaving Kirkwall. They hadn't packed for a long journey, but they have been able to hunt and gather from the wealth of the forest. Marian is exhausted and furious, and she makes a point to set every single one of the dirty mercenaries on fire. The rogue who travels with them offers a little more trouble, but eventually she gets him down too, on his knees with the point of her staff at his throat and burns on his face. As the battle stills around them, the rogue starts laughing.

"You're too late," he says, blood bubbling from his lips. "The master took the elf and split off days ago. There's nothing for you here but his armour; that'll fetch a pretty penny when you sell it. Maybe even enough to buy him back, if you're willing to wait until he ends up in the slave markets again."

Marian shrieks her rage and stabs him through the throat, and he dies with gurgling laughter still lingering on his lips. "Is it true?" she demands, whirling, and Varric lifts a burlap sack. It clanks, full of armour, and she knows without looking that it is Fenris's. The rogue was telling the truth. Fenris is gone.

"What do we do now?" Merrill asks tremulously, tears welling up. Anders reaches out a tentative arm and places it across her shoulders, and she leans into him.

Marian only shakes her head. "I don't know," she says.

There's a long silence, and then, tentatively, Anders says, "I know you won't want to hear this, Hawke, but we can't stay out here forever. I need to get back to Kirkwall eventually, even if none of the rest of you do, and- well. We've lost the trail."

"We can't just give up!" Marian shouts, rising abruptly to her feet. "I won't abandon him!"

"I know," Anders says. "And I'm sorry. You see what I'm saying, though, don't you?"

Marian hates it, but she does. She knows they can't linger in the woods for weeks, hoping to find the trail, and Merrill is not a good enough tracker to pick up clues that might be weeks old by now, if any clues are left at all.

"I'll put word out," Varric offers. "Fenris isn't exactly your standard, boring elf. Eventually they'll have to get back to civilization, and someone'll recognize him, and we can pick up the trail from there."

"But it could be weeks before we get word," Marian whispers desperately. "Who knows what'll happen between now and then."

"Broody is tough," Varric says, and comes forward to wrap one of his broad hands around her forearm. "He can take care of himself."

"I know."

"Have some faith in him," Varric says. "He won't give up, you'll see. We'll have him back in no time."

 

Fenris doesn't know why the blue-eyed man chooses to linger in town, but the carpet that he is forced to kneeling on is softer than rocky, uneven forest ground, and for that much at least he feels some gratitude. As well, on the first day, the blue-eyed man drugs him and orders him to stay put, and leaves him alone for a few hours. Although he is hazy and calm, deep in his submissive mindset, Fenris cannot be kept from all thought. He wanders around the room, his hands bound and on a decently long leash, unable to leave unless he unties the knots, a possibility which honestly does not even occur to him until the drug begins to wear off. In that time, though, he considers his situation. A slave again, or on the way to being one. The man who wants to be his master clearly desires him, which grants Fenris some small leverage, and he is not afraid of pain, which grants him a little more. He has the ability to obey or disobey, still. He does not  _want_ to disobey, not when he is drugged, but even in that state he does not forget how it feels to be lucid and rebellious, only the desire to continue on that way. This, he muses, might be what it is like to be Tranquil. He thinks about the man with Hawke's eyes, who wants to take her place in his life and take even more than that, and knows that though he will never offer his freedom has he had done for her, he can offer some things, and those might buy him opportunity. He wants to submit, but in the heart of him lives the desire to be free, no matter what potions the man pours down his throat.

The man comes back and ties Fenris tighter, binds his wrists all the way to the elbow and then shortens his leash until he is trapped kneeling at the foot of the bed. It makes Fenris scowl, and as he becomes more lucid once more, he fights his bindings. There is nothing to be done. He is weak from days of poor sleep and slim rations, and drained by constant pain. Even if he could phase through the ropes, activating the lyrium in this state would exhaust him. He won't deny it, even to himself: he is bitter about his situation, his own weakness, his very nature that has made it so easy for this man to make a thrall of him, time and again. He wants to be  _free_ . But he is a slave once more, made an animal at a mage's knee. Maybe he has never been anything else. He knows how he was with Hawke.

“Tell me about Hawke,” the man says, on into the evening. Fenris raises his head from where he has been curled over, resting his forehead on his bound forearms. The position is not entirely comfortable, but it prevents him from choking or from being so twisted up that it is impossible to sleep.

“What?” he asks, his tone flat.

“Tell me about your mistress, Hawke.”

Fenris snarls at the phrasing. “She was not my mistress.”

“Oh? Are you certain of that, slave? I doubt I will believe it if you tell me that you did not serve her. Certainly you protected her, that much I know from rumours and reports from my men. Did you run errands for her? Play to her whims in bed? Beg her for her touch and her attention, and feel  _so pleased_ when she granted them? I know what you are,” the man says. He is not sneering the words, not acting like this is anything to be ashamed of, or that the truth of it disgusts him. He is only stating facts, as if he does indeed know, and it strikes Fenris in the gut. “I've had enough slaves in my time to know what you are, what makes you work.”

Fenris says nothing, only bows his head again. The man laughs. “I have you pinned, slave. I know your kind.”

“You know nothing about me,” Fenris mutters, but it is weak. The man  _does_ know. Somehow, he knows exactly how Fenris had been in his relationship with Hawke.

“Why did she let you go out alone?” the man asks. “I will drug you again if you refuse to tell me, but it will be easier on both of us if you give in.”

“I will never give in to you,” Fenris says, and looks up once more, his eyes blazing. He's sure there is fury on his face, though it is a pale reflection of what he might once have been able to conjure. So quickly this man has brought him to heel, he thinks, and is disgusted with himself.

On the bed, the man sighs, and then he rises and goes to his pack to fetch the vial of red potion. By now, it is half-empty. “I gave you the option,” he reminds Fenris, and then kicks him viciously in the ribs. Fenris feels at least one of them give, the crack loud in his ear. He recoils, twisting away instinctively as much as he can. The motion ends with him lying on his side, gasping shallowly for breath, and the blue-eyed man squats next to him and presses one of his knees hard into Fenris's collarbone, holding him in place. He tips a few drops of the potion into the channel of his index and middle fingers pressed together, and then shoves his fingers into Fenris's mouth. It's a larger dose than Fenris has been given before, and he feels a flash of fear.

The haze takes him, and he tumbles into submission with terrifying speed. He moans lowly when the man removes his knee, and turns his face into the man's hand when he cups his cheek. “Good boy,” the man murmurs. “You're going to tell me what I want, yes?”

Fenris nods, tries to take a breath to speak, and nearly screams. Yes, his ribs are broken. A whine escapes his lips, and he turns begging eyes on the mage, who smiles and places a hand glowing with green healing magic on Fenris's ribs. The magic makes the lyrium burn, but it knits his ribs, and he sighs relief.

“You're nearly non-verbal like this, aren't you?” the man says, amused, and back away. Fenris tries to follow, but is caught by his leash.

“Oh,” he says, and touches it with his fingers.

“Yes, you're staying there for now,” the man says. His blue eyes are warm with his laughter. It warms Fenris, but he finds himself displeased anew when the man returns to the bed. He wants- he doesn't know what he wants, but he knows he does  _not_ want to be bound and kneeling on the hard ground any more.

“Please,” he says, after a period of silent wrestling with his own dissatisfaction, and the man looks at him from where he is reclined with a book in hand. “Please untie me.”

“What will you give me if I do?” the man asks.

Fenris tries to gather his muddled thoughts and fails. “Please,” he says again, a whine in his voice. He wants to be  _free_ .

“Call me master, pet, and you can come lie at my feet.”

Fenris bites his lip. Something about that feels wrong, but he doesn't want to be tied up any more. He wants to be good. “Master,” he says. “Please, I want to lie down with you.”

“Good boy,” the man murmurs, and comes over. He unties Fenris from the bed, but leaves the rope collar knotted around his throat and uses the extra to lead him up onto the mattress. “Curl up here, and we can talk.” He sits with his back to the headboard and gestures at his outstretched legs. Fenris crawls over to him and lies down, curled against the man's legs with his head on his thigh. The human warmth of him makes Fenris sigh and nestle in. “Lovely.”

Fenris bites his lip, but says nothing. The compliment itches under his skin.

“Now, pet, tell me,” the man begins, “why were you out in those woods without your mistress?”

“She hurt me,” Fenris says. “Hawke has never hurt me that way before.”

“Did she strike you? A simple unkindness, and you ran?”

Fenris shakes his head. “No. She said- she pities me. She hates that I want to please her. I didn't want to be her slave, but she saw me that way. I just wanted to make her happy.” By the end of his small speech, he's nearly whimpering. The hurt of Hawke's words is sharper when he is this way, unable to offer any defence of her accusation that he is, at heart, still a slave.

“She hurt your pride. Still, you are better trained than to run from such a petty offence,” the man says, a bit chiding. Fenris cringes away from his disappointment, but the touch of fingers in his hair soothes him.

“I didn't run,” Fenris says. He turns his face further into the man's thigh, drawing in the scent of leather and mild soap. He smells good; Hawke had smelled like wet dog most of the time when they'd first met, and after she recovered her estate she'd started wearing a perfume that was too sweet for Fenris's taste.

“What happened, then?” the man asks, carding his fingers through Fenris's hair. It's surely greasy, but he takes his time to work out knots when he finds them, and he occasionally teases the sensitive tip of Fenris's ear with a brush of his fingers. It makes Fenris's breath come faster.

“She left me.”

“Oh?”

“I hid after we fought. She left. I tried to wait, but I couldn't any more- I felt itchy,” Fenris tries to explain. He's flustered from the feeling of the man's hand on his head. He wants more, but his desire makes him squirm, discomfited.

“You're a wild thing,” the man murmurs. “You could not be expected to stay caged, waiting for your mistress to return. She was wrong to abandon you, pet. And now she has abandoned you again.”

Fenris whines. “No,” he says. “She's coming for me. She'll get me back.”

“No, pet,” the man says. He sounds so  _sorry_ . So compassionate. “You're mine now. Don't worry. I'll take care of you; I'll never hurt you like she did.”

“You've hurt me in ways she wouldn't,” Fenris accuses, and sits up a little to look at the man's face. “She wouldn't have-”

“Because she didn't know how to manage you,” the man says. “I'll show you.”

With one firm hand he forces Fenris's face back down into his lap, and with the other he begins to work at the laces of his breeches. Fenris shudders, knowing what's coming. There's cool dread somewhere inside him, but it is layered over by the desire to be good. The man has been so kind to him tonight; he owes him repayment.

“You're ready for me,” the man says. “So good, such a good boy for me. She doesn't deserve you.”

Fenris shakes his head a little, a soft noise catching in his throat, but he doesn't protest, even though he wants to. Hawke deserved  _better_ . He couldn't be good for her. Still, he wasn't with her now. When the man finally frees his cock, still only semi-hard, Fenris leans toward it with only a little prompting. The man's other hand stays on his head, laced into his hair, and urges him on as he takes the head into his mouth, suckling gently. It has been so long since he'd needed to do this, but Danarius had trained his gag reflex out of him years ago, and his muscle memory is still good.

The blue-eyed man's cock is hard and thick on his tongue, tasting of salt sweat and bitter pre-come, and Fenris swallows him down easily. He's twisted on the bed, his arms still bound in front of him, and he shifts to ease the awkwardness of the position. His movement only drives the man deeper into his throat, and he chokes a little. It makes the man laugh and grip his hair harder. “Shall I fuck your mouth, pet?” he asks. Fenris has no response; couldn't have responded even if he had.

The man clearly takes Fenris's lack of response for an agreement, and starts a slow, smooth rhythm, rocking his hips as he guides Fenris's head. Fenris tries to relax, letting himself be used, but his stomach is tight with discomfort. He tries to close his ears to the filthy praise that pours from the man's mouth as he takes Fenris, but he can't ignore it completely. It has been so long since anyone called him beautiful, pretty, lovely. Hawke had called him handsome or striking, when she complimented him at all. “Pretty slave,” the man purrs, and his voice hitches when his hips do. “Your mouth is so good. I'm going to make you my pet, my little wolf, and I'll have this all the time.” He sighs, contented. “I cannot wait to get you home and show you off. I'll be the talk to the Imperium, with such a lovely slave tamed at my side.”

The man's other hand comes up to fondle Fenris's ear, stroking the tip in a manner calculated to make Fenris moan, and moan he does. Hawke had loved playing with his ears, loved how teasing him that way would make him writhe if she kept at it long enough. It isn't real pleasure, but it is desperately arousing in the right context. Fenris would have been hard as steel and shoving his hips into the bedcovers even at that small touch, if he'd had his mouth buried in Hawke's cunt while she touched him. He can't quite find that sort of desire in himself now though, and instead only moans at the stimulation while the man fucks his mouth until he's drooling, his jaw aching and his head light from scarcity of breath.

“Are you enjoying this, slave?” the man says, his voice tight. He's close, Fenris thinks, and as if to confirm it the man's cock twitches against his tongue on the next inward thrust. “Are you hard?”

Fenris only groans, hoping that whatever the man understands of that will please him. It seems to, because moments later the man's hand is tightening around his ear, pinching the tip painfully, and rocking hard into Fenris's mouth to come down his throat. Fenris swallows as best he can, and when the man allows him to, he draws back, looking up from his curled position with wide eyes.

“So pretty,” the man says, his voice breathy, “so beautiful. I'll dress you in silks, pet. No more rough leathers. No more roughness at all- I want you soft and ready for me always. Danarius thought your best purpose was bodyguard, and a little extra on the side. More fool him. You're too lovely for anything but display, and on display is where I'll keep you.”

Fenris bites his lip, his eyebrows drawing together. “I like to fight,” he says hesitantly. “I don't want to give that up.”

“You can practice,” the man says, dismissive. “Use your forms and light sparring to keep your muscle tone good. But I want no scars on a pet, and I will not throw you away in battle. I have less comely slaves and servants for bodyguards, if I have need.”

Fenris nods, his gut clenched, and when directed he slides down off the bed, back to his kneeling position at the foot.

“Stay there, pet,” the man says, once Fenris is tied up again. “Our carriage will be here soon, and then we'll be out of your former mistress's reach forever.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reviews and kudos always welcome.


	5. Press

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A convergence of old masters and new ones.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not entirely sure that I'm happy with this chapter. It's narrative and introspection-heavy, and might be a little tell-y. It's also the last we'll be seeing of Hawke for a little while, at least. This story, ultimately, is not about her.
> 
> Warnings for non-con and drug addiction in this chapter, folks. We're into the darkest hour, here. Poor Fenris.

“Hawke.”

Marian looks up from the correspondence she's shifting through, sees the grim look on Aveline's face, and throws the papers down.

“What's the news?” she demands, smoothing her tunic anxiously. It has been weeks, and there's no word yet on Fenris.

“We haven't found him,” Aveline says, “but there's something else.” She holds up a letter. “Fenris was in contact with his sister. Apparently everything Hadriana said was true, and now she's come to Kirkwall on Fenris's coin. She's staying at the Hanged Man.”

“Should we meet her? Even without him here?” Marian asks. It seems wrong to deprive Fenris of the reunion, but it also seems wrong to let his only chance at regaining his past slip away without a word.

“I think so,” Aveline says, but she sounds cautious. “Hawke... I hate to suggest this, but it may be a trap.”

Marian frowns. “You think so? It's his sister, Aveline...”

“I know. As I said, I hate to suggest it. There's a possibility, however, and at the very least you should bring several of us along when you go to meet the woman.”

“Okay,” Marian sighs. “I trust you, Aveline, and I trust your judgement. Will you join me?”

“You're going now?” Aveline asks, surprised, but then her brow smooths. “Of course you are.”

“Varric and Isabela will be at the Hanged Man. I don't want to go all the way to Lowtown for Merrill, never mind Darktown for Anders. Let me arm and armour myself, and then we'll go,” Marian says, and takes the stairs two at a time. She changes rapidly into her robes and a sturdy belt, and grabs her staff from where it lies against the wardrobe before bounding back down the stairs. Aveline shifts her shield where it lies against her back, and then they're out the door and into the fading light of the day.

It's a good twenty minutes' walk at least from Marian's estate to the Hanged Man, but they take up a quick pace and they make good time. No one bothers them; the market is only just closing, and the streets are busy enough to discourage Kirkwall's various gangs from any overt activity for the next hour or so. Marian is focused utterly on their destination, so Aveline takes up the duty of keeping a sharp eye out regardless of the daytime hour, just in case.

When the dangling dummy comes into view, only Aveline's hand on Marian's arm stops her from breaking into a run. She's restless, desperate for some piece of Fenris, even one he is so disconnected from. It has been so long since she's heard his voice, or seen his face, and she misses him desperately. She worries constantly, and knows that it has had a severe impact on her composure, which is less than ideal given the precarious political situation in Kirkwall. The other day Meredith and Orsino had nearly come to blows in the middle of the city, and Marian was only just able to keep it together enough to diffuse the situation. She cannot be absent-minded when the whole city seems about to tumble into civil war, and yet her thoughts are far away, tethered to a lyrium-marked elf with eyes the colour of sage and a voice like a rockfall.

Marian pushes open the door and skims her eyes over the people in the tavern. There, Isabela at the bar, flirting with some hapless Ferelden lad, and Varric holding court near the fireplace. It is quiet, only a half-dozen regulars and perhaps a dozen more other folks that Marian does not recognize. And there, seated at a table near the middle of the room, is a female elf with red hair and an uncomfortable look on her face, with no drink and Tevinter clothing, both of which mark her as out of place. Marian approaches her, and she looks up.

The colour of her eyes is so strikingly familiar that it stops Marian in her tracks. Sage, just like Fenris's, and though their faces aren't entirely similar they are similar enough.

“C-can I help you?” the woman ventures, after Marian has been staring for a few moments too long.

“I'm sorry,” Marian says, her tone wooden. “You- you look like your brother.”

The woman's lips part. “You know Leto.”

“Leto?”

“Sorry,” she says, and looks down, then, briefly, glances at the stairs. “You would know him as Fenris, I suppose.”

“Yes,” Marian says, and nearly collapses into a seat next to the woman. She leans forward intently. “Yes, I know Fenris.”

“Where is he?” the woman asks.

“He's-” Marian hesitates, and then says, “He's not here. He... doesn't know you're here.”

“Why-”

“We suspected a trap,” Aveline says bluntly. She remains standing, behind Marian. “He is not yet aware that you are in Kirkwall.”

“You were wise,” comes a man's voice from the stairwell. Marian looks up, realizes that most of the tavern's customers have slipped out quietly, and then looks at the man on the stairs. He's older, with a grey beard and a mage's robes and staff. “A pity.”

Marian jolts up out of her chair, the suddenness of the movement sending the redheaded woman skittering back. Aveline steps up to Marian's shoulder, and she can see Varric and Isabela coming to ready positions in her peripheral vision.

“You're Danarius,” Marian says. “Fenris's old master.”

“His  _current_ master,” Danarius says. “This can surely be solved peacefully. Tell me where he is, and I will reward you.”

“I would never sell him out to you,” Marian spits. “Don't even suggest it.” She turns furious eyes on the elven woman. “Are you even truly his sister?”

She doesn't have time to answer. Danarius laughs, cutting off whatever her reply might have been and says, “Then it will have to be your deaths that lure him to me.” Then he raises his staff, and the fight begins.

Marian is used to fighting with Fenris by her side, but Aveline stands in well enough, drawing the attention of the shades and the corpses that Danarius summons and taking their punishment until Marian or Varric can dispatch them. Isabela darts around, disappearing and reappearing, taking out individual targets with swift movements that seem like nothing more than the flash of a blade until the monster she has struck is falling. Marian targets Danarius himself when she is not assisting Aveline, slowly wearing down his shields, managing to strike with lightning or fire here and there, or use force to throw him. It is a long fight, desperate and hard, and Marian takes a few hits herself before the end, but an end does come. Danarius resorts to blood magic, and she knows he has come to his limit. When the demons he summons fall beneath her ice and Aveline's blades, he stumbles back, pale from bloodloss and drained of mana, and she is on him in an instant, the sharpened point of her staff resting against his throat.

“Who took him?” Marian demands, and he gasps for breath for a moment, before saying, “I don't know what you're talking about.”

“Maker be damned you do!” Marian shouts, and prods him. He cringes.

“I came here to find my little wolf,” he sneers. “If he was elsewhere, would I not have gone there?”

“As much as I hate to point this out, Hawke, he's right,” Varris says from behind her. “He can't have any hand in Fenris's kidnapping, or he wouldn't be here.”

“Damn it!”

“Fenris was taken?” Danarius says, abruptly both irritated and intrigued. “By who?”

“We thought it was you,” Varric says, ambling forward to peer around Marian at the defeated magister lying sprawled across the stairs. “Clearly not.”

“No,” Danarius murmurs. Then he grins, vicious. There is blood between his teeth. “Maybe he wasn't taken at all,” he says to Marian. “Maybe he ran from you, just as he ran from me. You were no better of a master than I was, in the end, and he broke your leash just as he broke mine. We're not so different, you and I.”

“I'm nothing like you,” she snarls, but his words bite deeply. She was his master, wasn't she? Maybe he had fled willingly, once he realized she had made him a slave once more. Those men might have been a ruse, or simply the hirelings of whatever smuggler Fenris had contracted to get him out of Kirkwall secretly, and not in the know. She had no way to know. “I'm not- I'm not like you.”

Danarius laughs, and spits blood onto the hem of her robes. “You're exactly like me,  _little girl_ . Will you chase him unto your own death, like I have? Will you drag him home and bind him until he never thinks of running from you again? You claim to hate me, but  _you are me_ .”

“Shut up!” Mariam screams, and then drives the point of her staff through the magister's neck. Blood sprays, catching Marian in the face as she bears her weight down, and Danarius dies with gurgling laughter half-formed in his throat.

Marian finds that her breath is coming hard, and she drags herself away, trying to shut out the squelch her staff makes as she pulls it from Danarius's flesh. She looks up to see the elf woman standing there, watching in horror. When she catches Marian's eye, the woman withdraws rapidly, until her back is pressed to the wall. Marian advances on her, blood on her face and sick fury in her eyes, and snarls, “Are you even really his sister?”

“I am,” she chokes out. “My name is- my name is Varania, I swear, I'm really Leto- Fenris's sister. I-”

“How could you?” Marian's voice is almost shrill, and she thinks of Carver. She could never have betrayed him this way, not for anything. “How could you condemn your own brother to torture and slavery once more? What could ever be worth that?”

“He offered to make me his apprentice!” Varania cries desperately. “Please, you don't understand. I- I had nothing, I was a  _tailor_ when I could have been a  _magister_ . And Leto, he- he won our freedom, mine and our mother's, but we were left in poverty while he just  _forgot about us_ .”

“That wasn't his choice! The lyrium did that to him, he never asked for that!”

“But he did!” Varania swipes away the angry tears from her eyes. “He did ask for it. He competed for those markings, and when he won them he also won a boon from the magister: freedom for myself and mother. But it was no boon.”

“I should kill you now,” Marian hisses. “For what you would have done to him, I should kill you. But one day you might see what you've done wrong, and come crawling back, and he might forgive you. He might want what you can offer of his past.”

“I don't care,” Varania says, and slips out from between Marian and the wall, headed for the door. “Whatever  _Fenris_ is, whoever he is- it doesn't matter. He's not my brother any more. My brother was called Leto, and he died years ago.”

Then she's gone, and Marian is left staring at the stained wooden wall of the Hanged Man, her companions clustered behind her, all of them standing in shocked silence.

 

True to the blue-eyed man's word, a carriage arrives for them three days after they arrive in the village. In that time, he does not take Fenris into his bed again, seeming disappointed in Fenris's reaction when he wakes up the morning after. He had been almost utterly unresponsive, curled up in a ball and only barely suppressing the keening noise he could feel trapped in his throat. He has never felt so wretched in his life, and he remembers what it had felt like to be punished when he had still loved Danarius. In a way, this is worse, because he remembers the glow of pleasure that had come from being good, the desire to be close to this man who wanted him tamed. He remembers that he had been such a willing slave even with a tiny dose of the potion.

The carriage takes them north. During the days, while they travel, Fenris kneels at the blue-eyed man's feet, his head bowed. It has been years since he spent so much time on his knees, and he aches, but he grows used to it once more in what seems like no time at all. When they stop, for breaks during the day or in the evenings to sleep in an inn or make camp, Fenris can see the terrain growing more rocky. Nevarra is rising around him, the Free Marches falling behind, and it makes Fenris shaky and fearful. After rocky Nevarra comes arid Tevinter, and he is not ready. He has not been back since his flight from Seheron, and he has no  _desire_ to go back. Tevinter is pain and servitude and bondage, and he wants to run in the other direction until his feet are bleeding and his breath is gone, if that is what it takes to get away forever. But he is constantly bound, weak and tired and heartsick, and any time he gets a rebellious set in his jaw the man doses him with the red potion and coaxes Fenris so, so gently into servicing him. That always sets Fenris back, leaving him in a spiral of self-hated and nausea, and over time it builds until that is near all he feels, except when he is dosed and docile.

It is easy to become addicted. To feel so comfortable and relaxed is a blessing, and though he hates himself for it when he is sober once again, Fenris feels the want begin to take hold of him. He doesn't slide so deep any more, but he stays low for longer, and he clings to the feeling by his fingernails when it starts to fade. It is  _easy_ to feel that way, to be submissive and good for the man who wants to be his master. Almost as easy as it had been to be that way for Hawke, and though the thought burns, it possesses him as well. He could be good. Freedom has brought him nothing but confusion, fear, and anguish, and his repeated escape attempts have been ultimately fruitless: he is a slave once more. It seems that that is all he will ever be, at least in everyone's eyes but his own, and he considers that giving up might just be easier.

“We are not going directly into Tevinter,” the blue-eyed man says to Fenris one day. It surprises him enough that he lifts his head to meet the man's eyes, and the man smiles at him and strokes his head. Just the previous night he had dosed Fenris and bathed him in the inn they had stayed at, and then made him lie face down, his knees tucked under him, on the bed. He had jerked himself off across Fenris's back and rubbed his spend into his skin, laughing all the while. Fenris can still feel traces of it under his tunic, though most has by now flaked away. His skin is filthy, and he wants to scratch until he bleeds. But his hair is clean, and the man seems to enjoy rubbing the fine, silky strands between his fingers.

“Good boy,” the man murmurs. “Eyes down.” He waits until Fenris obeys before he says, “That lovely potion I give you is an Orlesian invention, and my supply is running low. I will eventually be able to wean you off, but that will take time, and between now and then you will need larger doses to get what you are craving. We pass through Nevarra and stop in Orlais before going on to Minrathous.”

Fenris doesn't respond. The man doesn't seem to expect him to, only strokes his hair again and then sits back, settling in for the day's travel. Fenris is not sure that he's surprised about the potion's origin- the Orlesians are notorious for their strange sexual tastes, and Fenris would not be shocked if submission was one of them. Also, he muses, staring at the fabric-covered panel on the inside of the carriage door, it might be a rape drug. Certainly the blue-eyed man has no trouble using it for that purpose, though he has yet to take Fenris in the traditional sense. He's anticipating that heavily, and he tenses every time he remembers that it is surely coming. Not even weeks would give him enough time to prepare for being violated in that way once more, and he's not sure that even with the drugs he would not fight. Perhaps that is why the man is waiting. He doesn't like it when Fenris resists or protests, and doing so has never earned a sexual punishment, only physical harm of other kinds. The question is merely how much more pain Fenris can take before he breaks and gives up on protesting, and the man is able to take what he wants, once and for all.

Fenris is so  _tired_ . Tired of running, of fighting. He's tired of pain and confusion. He wants to sleep, perhaps forever. (Not forever. He remember saying to Anders, once,  _To kill oneself is a sin in the eyes of the Maker. Some things must be worse than slavery_ . He wants so desperately to believe that.) He is listless and sick all the time, except when he is drugged. As the days pass, and they travel west into Orlais, he feels himself grow hungry for the potion, for the peace it brings. It is so easy to forget that it is poison when it makes him feel so much better. The man always laughs when Fenris opens his mouth eagerly for the few drops of potion he is given most nights, and laughs all the louder on the nights he denies Fenris, and sits back and watches him shudder and curl up tight and refuse to eat. Fenris has nightmares on the nights he is not dosed. He dreams, sometimes, of losing his will, of becoming a completely willing thrall forever, slipping away into nothingness until all he is is a warm body and an empty heart. Sometimes he dreams of the opposite. Of futile freedom, running endlessly into the darkness with rusted shackles hanging broken from his wrists, biting into his skin and leaving him bloody. 

Fenris has so many scars. Most of them are invisible, buried beneath his skin, pale streaks of remembered pain that rub raw the healthy parts of him. Others lie on him, marring him, making him a mutilated thing. Not only the lyrium, though that does him the favour of distracting from the rest. But a knotted scar across a shoulder blade, old whipmarks on his back, pale lines on his arms and his legs where he was not so careful, and either could not or  _would_ not be healed with magic. He feels fragile, sometimes, in his wrists and his ankles and his ribs, where the bone has been broken and mended a few too many times. Hawke used to touch those scars with reverence, called him handsome, striking, and left it at that. She never asked. The blue-eyed man, however, strips him naked one night and demands story after story, an account of Fenris's failures from the minor to the major. His mistakes when he was a slave that earned him floggings; his mistakes on the run when he was alone and had no one by his side, no one at his back; his mistake in recent years, when he was too proud of accept help, or too afraid to ask lest his weakness make him unworthy in her eyes. It is demeaning, cruel. The man touches each of the scars like they are distasteful things, though he has called Fenris beautiful before.

"You are imperfect," the man tells Fenris, as he stands nude and shamed before him. "I will hone you, slave. Polish you. Do you understand?"

Fenris has been given a larger dose of the potion than normal. He is floating and loose, he feels ashamed of himself for being a disappointment, and that feeling is the most immediate. All rational thought is a distant thing. Truthfully, he does not understand; he doesn't want to. Let the man do the thinking. But he nods, because he knows that is what the man wants.

"Good, pet. Down."

Fenris goes hard to his knees, and does not flinch when they connect with the floor, though the pain is a present thing.

"Tell me what you want."

"I want to be good, ser," Fenris whispers, his head bowed. "I want to be perfect."

"For who?" the man demands.

"For you."

"And who am I?"

Fenris swallows. He knows the answer to this, though it tastes odd in his mouth, even now. "The master."

" _Your_ master. Do not forget it, slave. You belong to me now, and I will make of you what I want." The man is so sure in his words, and it soothes something in Fenris. He doesn't need to decide anything; his master knows. He nearly gasps at the thought, because it is both wrong and a perfect relief. This man  _should not_ be his master, whispers the wild thing in the back of his mind. He is not a thing that can be owned. But he is, he tells the wild thing, insistent. He is a thing that can be dominated, and that is so much easier. Hawke, beautiful Hawke with her eyes like the new master's, she had turned her face when he had shown his true nature. This man would embrace him. He would make everything right.  _Do not_ , whispers the wolf in his mind. But Fenris cannot listen, not and keep his sanity, so he kneels and he shuts away everything in him that demands that he fight, that demands freedom, and he lets himself drift away.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments and kudos always welcome.


	6. Take

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A look into the mind of the magister, among other things.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WHAT? AN EARLY UPDATE? GOOD LORD.
> 
> I can't promise that there will still be an update on Wednesday this week, but I feel like there might be- I wrote a chapter and a half yesterday, and also I'm really way too excited for people to read this part to wait. This is the part where you guys are going to get a look at where this story is really going, or at least where it's going as far as I know. I've now written up to about halfway through chapter 9, and I'm still a ways from done, so... well. We'll see.
> 
> A huge thank you to [inkcharm](http://archiveofourown.org/users/inkcharm/pseuds/inkcharm), who has been an incredible encouragement to me these past few weeks. You leave the most wonderful reviews, darling, and I'm always excited to hear from you. This update, brought to you by how great you are.
> 
> Uh, just a note: there's a graphic description of a rape in this chapter. It'll get better after this, but this is the Darkest Hour.

Orlais comes on all at once. The city they enter is close to edge of the Imperium, bustling and decadent in the way the Orlesians favour, but with a glint of gold and obsidian that hints at Tevinter influence. It is a crossroads between the two empires, and it shows: Tevinter colour, Orlesian architecture, Tevinter scenery, Orlesian fashion. The inn they stay in is more in the Tevinter style, and the innkeeper speaks Tevene to the master, and does not even acknowledge Fenris.

“We will be here only one night,” the master says. “We leave in the morning.”

Fenris bows his head and follows him up the stairs to the room they have rented. His arms are bound wrist to elbow in front of him; it is uncomfortable but not unbearable. He has become more used to such treatment in recent weeks. His knees are bruised but adjusting to kneeling, his wrists are redeveloping calluses from being constantly bound that he lost years ago, and he no longer finds himself growing stiff after spending hours with his head bowed. It is strange to become adjusted to these things again, and it burns in a dull, distant way. Fenris wants to be high; wants to be so low down in submission that he cannot think.

The master ties Fenris to the bed, not tightly, just enough that he is forced to kneel at the foot. Kindly, the master folds a blanket for Fenris to place beneath his knees, so he is at least not on the wooden floor. His legs are bared by the black tunic he wears, and he is glad to avoid splinters. “Thank you,” Fenris murmurs, when he is settled, and the master runs a hand through his hair as a subtle reward. Fenris only barely restrains himself from leaning into the touch.

The master moves around the room once Fenris is tied and kneeling, and eventually returns to Fenris's side with the vial of red potion in his hand. There is only a trickle of liquid at the bottom, and Fenris looks up to eye it hungrily. He can almost taste the cinnamon on his tongue, and his mind is tangled in knots of wanting.

“Do you want all of it, pet?” the master asks, teasing. He shakes the vial, sloshing the liquid around. “I'm going to buy more. We may as well use this up.”

Fenris nods, and tries abortively to reach for the vial. With his hands bound, and with his inhibitions binding him, he does not get far. The master, perceptive and attuned to Fenris's motions and moods as he is, notices anyway, and laughs.

“Beg me for it, slave, and you can have it,” he says. Fenris swallows dryly.

“Please,” he says, his voice a hoarse whisper. “Master, please, I want it.”

“Good, pet,” the master says, and runs a hand through Fenris's hair again. “This will put you down very deep. Are you ready?”

“ _Please_ ,” Fenris says again. He just wants to be gone. He wants his thoughts to be quiet, to stop spiralling ever downward as they do when he is sober. He wants to stop hating what he is.

“Good,” the master murmurs again, and unstoppers the vial. “Mouth open, pet.”

Fenris obeys eagerly, nearly moans when the master places the cool glass of the vial against his lips, and chases every drop of the liquid that is tipped into his mouth with his tongue, even when the master pulls away. He has a few moments to taste the spice of it, and then the tide takes him.

 

The streets quiet as dusk falls, and the magister makes his way quickly. The slave was almost completely non-responsive when he left the inn, but he will not stay that way forever. He knows the paths in this city, far enough from both Orlesian and Tevinter authority that certain depravities flourish, and he knows the shop that will sell him what he wants. An apothecary on the darker side of town, and though he had considered bringing the slave for extra protection, he did not dare arm him. He knows that the wolf has not quite yet lost his teeth, but it will be soon. He can taste it, like the faint hint of cinnamon and the sweetness of victory on the back of his tongue. The slave is so soft beneath his hands now, so pliable, and he muses on that with half his attention as he walks the cobblestone streets. Perhaps tonight the slave will be ready to bend for him. Perhaps he has grown impatient enough not to mind a little fight, though it is not his usual taste. The slave's life burns in him, as potent as the lyrium under his skin, and the magister muses that it might be a shame to crush it completely. Still, in the pursuit of pleasure sacrifices must sometimes be made.

Including coin, he sighs within the privacy of his own mind as he steps into the apothecary. The potion he has gotten his pet so addicted to is an expensive indulgence, though well worth it.

There is another customer in the store, the magister notes immediately as the door swings shut behind him. Two, in fact. An auburn-haired man in armour, and a huge Qunari. The magister tenses, but quickly observes that neither man nor ox wear red warpaint, and the beast may in that case be Tal-Vashoth. Not that that is any reassurance, and he unclasps his staff from his back and holds it at his side as he steps forward to catch the apothecary's attention. The man behind the desk sees him and pauses in his discussion with the Qunari to acknowledge him with a nod.

The magister steps closer, listening carefully to the last words of their conversation.

“-another customer,” the apothecary is saying. The magister smirks. “You will have to take your business elsewhere, messere. I do not sell the potion you seek.”

The Qunari grunts. “You're still lying to me,” he says, and the apothecary swallows nervously. “See to your customer, then you're going to give me some answers.”

The apothecary bites his lip, but turns resolutely away from the hulking ox to look at the magister. “Magister Philomelus,” he says, and the magister smiles, pleased the man remembers him. He sees the Qunari take note in his peripheral vision, but ignores it. “How can I help you on this fine evening?”

“You know my usual order by now, surely,” the magister replies smoothly. “Three vials.”

The apothecary blinks. “That's my entire stock.”

“And I will pay handsomely for it, as you know,” the magister says. “Come now, Serah Odite, surely you would not deny me?”

The apothecary shakes his head quickly. “Certainly not, Magister Philomelus, I was only surprised. It is more than any person would ever need, at least all at once, or so I had thought.”

The magister smiles slyly. “I have something of a... project. I'm sure you understand.”

“Ah, yes,” the apothecary says, and then he clears his throat. “Allow me to fetch you your potion, Magister.” He scurries off into his back room then, leaving the magister alone with the Qunari and the man standing at his side. The ox is still looking at the magister with appraisal, and silence stretches for a long moment.

“A regular in a place like this, huh?” the Qunari says, finally. The magister turns to regard him. “Must be some order, if a magister like yourself would come here to get it.”

The magister gives him a thin smile. “We all have our particular tastes. Of course, you may not be aware of that, given that your people are driven purely by instinct and ruled by heretical order; you have no space in your mind for taste.”

The Qunari bares his teeth in what might have been a grin if it were less like a snarl. “Oh, I know plenty about taste. I know that yours must be real depraved, if you're walking in here with a 'project'.”

The magister ignores the jab, and a moment after that the apothecary comes bustling back in, completely oblivious to the tension that has filled the room in his absence. He has three vials filled with iridescent red liquid in his hands, and the magister nods, approving.

“Heart's Ease,” the apothecary says, and places the vials on his countertop. “A lifetime supply, I expect. I hope your project is worth the sovereigns you owe me, Magister Philomelus.”

“He is,” the magister murmurs, and places a large purse on the counter. “That should cover the fee and a small addition for your discretion, as always.” He ignores the fact that the idiot had just declared in front of two strangers the contents of the vials. The Qunari may not even know what Heart's Ease does, and if so, he will not care.

The apothecary plucks up the coin, weighing the bag in his hand, and nods approvingly, then bids the magister good night and farewell, bowing deeply until he has stepped out into full-fallen dusk. The magister rests his staff against the wall for a moment and ties the vials to his belt, and is prepared to be off once more when the thud of the door and a voice from behind him give him pause.

“Heart's Ease, huh?” says the Qunari, and the magister turns slowly to face it. “What's a magister doing with a drug like that?”

The magister stares him down until the Qunari snorts and concedes. “Fine,” it says, holding up its hands. “Don't tell an honest scoundrel what you're planning to do with an obscene amount of a potent drug.”

“There is nothing honest in you,” the magister says. “Do you intend to attack me, ox?”

The Qunari snorts. “I'm honest enough not to stick a man who's done no harm to me or mine,” he says. “Off you go, little magister.”

The magister bristles at the dismissal, but he lets the anger linger only in a tightness around his eyes and turns his back, stalking away down the road, his hand clenched around his staff. No knife comes, but he does not relax until he is stepping back into the inn room and laying his eyes once more on his slave, his lovely project.

The wolf has so much potential, he muses, tucking the vials away in his pack. He is so beautiful, so strong. The magister reaches down and tips up his slave's chin to look into his eyes, and when he sees that his pupils are blown wide and his gaze is unfocused, he smiles. He has some tension to work out after his encounter with that beast, and he knows just the way he wants to do it.

 

Fenris wakes wishing he hadn't. Everything aches. He shifts, trying to place himself, and lightening lances up his spine. There is an arm like a band of steel around his waist, and it draws him in tighter as he moves; he stills in response, and tries to check his breathing. He barely manages, counting his breaths slowly as he takes stock of his body.

Naked, sticky-slick between his thighs in a way he wishes he did not remember. Bruises blossoming on his hips and around his wrists. The muscles of his back and his legs sore from tension and from being stretched uncomfortably.

He remembers nothing. No, a lie- he remembers flashes: the master's hands hard on his hips, on the back of his head, shoving him down. The pop of a cork from a vial of oil, lightly scented. A voice in his ear, whispering, though the words are gone. The feeling of-  _the feeling_ . Fenris wants to scratch off his skin, but he remembers from years ago, from the very first time, that trying to do so had not only earned him a punishment, it had also failed to make him feel clean. He will never be clean again.

He has no broken bones, only the remnants of the weakest of struggles. Perhaps he had not struggled at all, and the master was simply a rough lover. He cannot remember. Everything is lost in the haze of the drug, and though Fenris hoards every memory he has made in the last few years jealously, he is glad to have lost these ones. He wishes he were still high, if only so that he would not mind so much that he is now owned completely by the man who is pressed against his back. The master smells like clean skin and his thighs are smooth against Fenris's. He must have bathed himself, but Fenris is wet and half-loose still, and he wonders if the master will want him again when he wakes. They are not pressed so tightly together that he can guess.

Behind Fenris, the master shifts and yawns, and he pulls Fenris closer. Close enough that Fenris can feel the master's cock, half-hard against his ass.

“Good morning, slave,” the master murmurs, and runs a covetous hand down Fenris's chest, flaking off remnants of come. “Do you remember last night?”

Fenris tenses and draws away subtly. “Not well,  _dominus_ ,” he says. The word rolls more easily off his tongue now; he wonders how many times the master forced him to scream it. “Only flashes.”

“Then let me restore some of your memory,” the master says. The hand not on Fenris's belly uncurls from behind the master's head and reaches down between Fenris's legs. He thumbs the reddened rim of Fenris's hole, sliding in with some difficultly when he presses. “You're so tight, pet.”

The master pulls back and retrieves something from the covers, then returns with slick fingers. He pushes two into Fenris without hesitation, and Fenris cannot stop himself from arching away, a thready moan of pain catching in his throat. “Ah, ah,” the master chides, but he doesn't stop, only thrusting his fingers a few times to make Fenris properly wet again. Then comes the head of his cock, also slick, pushing into Fenris's body in one hard thrust. Fenris's cry of pain mingles with the master's low groan, and he shudders, trying to escape the master's grip. He almost manages to writhe away, but the master rolls and pins him, the weight of him stealing Fenris's breath. He is forced to lie there, his arms trapped awkwardly below him, as the master fucks him with languid rolls of his hips. Sometimes the master's cock brushes Fenris's prostate, and he whimpers through the unwanted flashes of pleasure. The rest is pain. He is too sore, too raw from the previous night. But the oil eases the master's passage enough that he gets pleasure from it, and after what seems like forever, he stills and spills hot into Fenris's body.

When the master withdraws, leaving Fenris empty and hurting, he curls up and hides his face in the pillow. There are tears on his face, he knows. Of pain, from his bruises and from the agony of the rape, and of a type of sorrow. Violation and depression are tangled together in Fenris's gut, making him ill and too tired to do anything but lie there, tense, bereft, pained, and cry. The master chuckles and runs a hand over Fenris's hair.

“Good boy,” he murmurs. “You're done fighting, aren't you?”

Fenris does not answer, which is surely answer enough.

The master moves around the room, making ready quietly. “Clean yourself,” he says finally, and throws a cold, wet cloth onto Fenris's back. The cool slap makes him flinch; he uncurls and begins to wipe himself down. He had not looked at himself; now he does, and sees his skin turned black and blue, handprints like brands at his hips and blood between his thighs. The master must have healed him after he had torn, because he is not bleeding now. When he goes to wipe away the fresh spend that has leaked from his body, the master stops him and manhandles him until he turns and bends over.

“I could plug you,” he muses idly, tracing his fingers through the evidence on Fenris's skin. “Keep myself locked in you. Would you like that, slave?”

Fenris shakes his head. “No,  _dominus_ . Please don't.”

“Hm,” the master says. “Stay.”

Fenris stays. The master goes away, over to his bag, and returns with something cool and smooth. It's not too large, Fenris thinks gratefully, and then the master pushes it into his body and his mind subsides again into keening. It's long, slightly curved to press at his prostate, and flared at the base to keep the master's seed trapped inside. It hurts going in, but once it is settled, it's not so bad. Fenris tries to shush the howling thing in his mind, reminds himself that it could be so much worse. The master has not whipped him yet. Not taken him dry, or made him desperate then denied him orgasm. Even Hawke had played that game sometimes, but this master seems kinder than that. Fenris can deal with pain. He can deal with being sore and violated, until he grows used to this treatment once more.

( _I don't want to be used to it_ , whispers the wild thing, the wolf. Fenris shushes that too.)

Once Fenris has cleaned the rest of himself of lingering sweat and tears, the master allows him to dress. A long black tunic that falls partway down his thighs and hangs loose at his collar, baring his collarbones and the long stretch of his legs. The bruises on his thighs are still visible.

“Come along, pet,” the master says, and Fenris hunches his shoulders, bows his head, and follows. The rope collar around his throat has been replaced, and his lead is in the master's hands. His hands are bound at the small of his back. “You've been so good. A dose for the carriage ride, hm?”

“Yes, master,” Fenris whispers, and hates himself, somewhere deep inside. This is not what he wanted, once. But it is easier, despite the pain, despite the wrongness of it all. It is so easy to be good, and being good will end the pain. Maybe. Maybe.

He follows his master into the street, kneels when told, and does not look up when a man with a low, booming voice calls out to his master and asks him, “So, this is your project, huh?”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments and kudos are always welcome! Especially on this chapter- it's a bit of a twist, and I want to know what people think.


	7. Choose

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Once encounter with a slightly unsavoury magister later...
> 
> Alternatively: The Iron Bull, meet Fenris; Fenris, the Iron Bull.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the slightly-late update, but today was hectic, and also this is the second chapter for this week, so none of you get to complain.
> 
> The magister's name, Philomelus, means "friend of ease". Just... for your information. Also, I apologize for my rusty-ass Latin skills in advance; it's been like six months since I've had to decline a noun (OR AN ADJECTIVE, ESPECIALLY ONE THAT IS NOT ACTUALLY REAL), and it probably shows. Translation in the end notes if the meaning isn't clear, but there's not a lot to it. If anyone has better Latin skills than I, please feel free to correct me.
> 
> The Iron Bull is a very difficult character to write. I hope I did him justice. See also: Krem.

The elf is a pretty specimen, that's for sure. Kneeling in the dust, wearing a tunic that's loose enough nearly to fall off one of his shoulders, his thighs thin and marked with silver tattoos. The rest of his skin bears similar marks. And over those, bruises, purple against the brown of his skin. In a way, the Iron Bull can appreciate it. He's put bruises like that on partners himself over the years, and he likes the way it looks. But he's not so sure that that's what this elf signed up for, not with a rope collar tied around his throat and his hands snug against the base of his back, probably tied. He's staring at the ground, doesn't even flinch when the Iron Bull calls out. That sort of thing is an indicator of slavery that runs deep, but why the need for Heart's Ease, if the elf is so broken?

“Qunari,” the magister spits. Magister Philomelus, the apothecary had called him. Ironic. The Iron Bull almost laughed when he heard it, because magisters are friends of no one, and certainly don't make things easy. “You have no business here.”

“I think I get to decide that,” the Iron Bull says. He's putting on a relaxed face, but any man who would use Heart's Ease to get what he wants is a snake, and the Iron Bull is wary. Krem stands at his left shoulder, Skinner at his right. The others are lying in wait around the street, lingering and keeping watch. The magister is alone except for the elf, but he could summons a dozen demons as easy as bleeding. Literally. “Is it him you're drugging?”

“The slave is my property, to do with as I wish,” the magister says dismissively. “Get on with you.”

“Nah, you know,” the Iron Bull says, “I think I'd like to know what he has to say about that.” He gestures at the elf, who still has not moved. Dosed, maybe, or just broken. If it's the latter, he'll give it up for lost, but the former sits wrong with him. Not his business, sure. Just... sits wrong with him, to leave a man at the mercy of a drug like the one the magister is using. It's an insidious thing.

The magister sneers. “He has nothing to say. He  _has no say_ .”

The Iron Bull pauses. Spits into the dirt beside him. Krem unshoulders his maul, Skinner's hand drift to her daggers, and in his peripheral vision he sees Dalish step up out of the shadows just behind the magister, out of his line of sight. Perfect. “He's got as much say as he wants,” the Iron Bull says. He looks at the elf. “Hey, you.” No response. “Elf!” A twitch. The Iron Bull grins. “You want to stay with this guy? Or are you ready to go?”

“Enough!” the magister roars, and slings his staff off of his back. Lightning crackles from the stone at the top. “Be gone with you, you and your thugs, you filthy animal! The slave belongs to me; you know nothing of this.”

“I know plenty,” the Iron Bull says. He pulls his greatsword off of his back and rests the tip in the dirt. “I know there's more of us than there are of you. But maybe he wants to stay. What d'you say, elf?”

The elf is kneeling there still, but he has looked up, his eyes wide and green. The magister looks down at him, sees him looking up, and raises his staff, a snarl on his face. The Iron Bull rolls his shoulders. Lightning strikes.

The magister slumps to the ground, unconscious. Behind him, Dalish lowers her staff and grins at the Iron Bull. He grins back. Then he goes over and he crouches in front of the elf, meets his eyes squarely, and says, “What'd you say, kid? You want to stay with him, we'll leave you here. You want to go, we'll take you, and you'll be safe from him and the others like him until you decide you're done with us.”

The elf shakes his head, not like a no, but like he's confused. “Why?” he asks a moment later. He voice is a harsh whisper.

“Everyone deserves a choice,” the Iron Bull says.

“I don't- I don't know.”

“You don't?” the Iron Bull asks, and raises his eyebrow. He sees the elf's dilemma. He's Qunari, he knows obedience. He knows how easy it is when the orders are clean cut, when the lines are drawn by someone else. How it feels to do well, to be exactly what you are. It's hard to figure yourself out, hard to be a person out in the world with no guidance. That's why the Qun exists. The Qun isn't slavery, though. It's about purpose, and no one's purpose is to be abused, not even a pretty elf with some strange tattoos. The question is, does the elf know that?

“I- I think I was meant to be a slave,” the elf says. His voice rolls at the edges with a hint of Tevinter. Born into slavery, probably. “I tried. I tried to be free. I failed. Why try to save me?”

“Everyone deserves a choice,” the Iron Bull says again, and some things clarify. Escaped slave, being dragged back to Tevinter for reconditioning. It must feel like fate. Why struggle? “No one's meant for slavery.”

“Then what was I meant for?” the elf asks. “I was free, and even then I was not happy. I couldn't be good, and I don't- I don't know how. To be good. Except for this.”

The poor kid is so twisted up. The Iron Bull thinks he wants to be free, but he doesn't know how. Then again, do any of them really know that? “There's other ways,” he says. “But you'll never find them if you let yourself be tamed. Come on, kid.” He rises, cringing a little as his bad knee complains. “Come with us, and maybe you'll figure it out. Or stay, if that's what you want. I'm not saying that's a bad choice, because it'll still be yours, no matter what.”

The elf stares at the ground. His hands and throat are bound, he's tattooed and bruised, and the way he sits says that every part of him has been hollowed out. Whatever choice he makes, the Iron Bull knows, he'll have to be able to live with it. This is one of those moments that change a person's whole life. He hopes the elf knows it too, because he won't be able to go back.

“I told someone once,” the elf says slowly, talking to the dirt. “I told her that I am not a slave. Again and again, and I couldn't convince either of us. I couldn't convince the world, either. I wanted too much to be good. Does that make me a slave?”

“No,” the Iron Bull says. “It doesn't make you anything. The only one who gets to decide what you are, if you're anything, is you.”

“I don't want to decide,” the elf says, and when he looks up, there's pleading in his gaze. “I'm so tired.”

The Iron Bull shrugs. He refuses to decide for this man, kneeling here before him. He has to make the choice for himself. If it's slavery, so be it. Freedom, and the Iron Bull will do all he can to help. Something about this elf screams opportunity, and the way his mind has been bent still sits wrong.

(The third option, of course, is death. The Iron Bull would offer that, too, but there's life enough in this elf for five men, and he knows he wouldn't take it.)

It's quiet for a long time. The elf studies the Iron Bull, and the Iron Bull studies the elf. Krem and the others stand ready for whatever comes.

“I'm done,” the elf says finally. “If that means I must kill a part of me that has made me myself all my life, then so be it. I cherish the thing that makes me a slave less than the thing that makes me wild. Cut me free.”

The Iron Bull laughs, then, and comes forward with a boot knife in hand. He slices the rope around the elf's throat, admiring the unflinching way he bares the vulnerable flesh, and then the ropes around his wrists. The elf rolls his shoulders, then his wrists, then he looks at the magister, still lying face-down in a pile in the road.

“You want to kill him?” the Iron Bull asks.

The elf considers. “No,” he says. “I- cannot.”

“He'll come after you,” the Iron Bull warns.

The elf shrugs, and says, “You do it, if it bothers you. I am used to running by now.”

“That's no good,” the Iron Bull says, and gestures to Skinner. A thrown blade buries itself neatly in the magister's spine; he jerks, he stills, and blood begins to pool beneath him. “No running.”

“Not from him,” the elf says. “Thank you.”

 

The first thing Fenris does after the Qunari and his company take him back to their camp is ask for a guide to the nearest water source so that he may bathe. One of the elves, the woman without Dalish markings, takes him, shows him a river and then stands with her back turned in the bushes by the riverside as a guard while he washes. He pulls the magister's toy from his body, slowly, painfully, and lets the water take it away. The cold of the water burns, but even that is not enough to make him feel clean. Eventually he is forced to step out of the river by his own shivering, his skin reddened from cold and harsh scrubbing. The woman gives him a measuring look, but says nothing.

Back in the camp, Fenris keeps to himself as much as possible. The huge Qunari introduces him to the company of mercenaries, called the Chargers, on the first day, rattling off names and roles: Krem, his second-in-command; Stitches, their medic; Rocky, a heavy-hitter; Grim, the silent type; Dalish, an “archer”; Skinner, “the stabby one”. Fenris is asked his name, and he tells them. They all nod, greet him, and then for the most part they leave him alone. The medic asks if he needs any attention; Fenris says no. He takes advantage of the space they give him, though he does pitch in when it seems help is needed around the camp. He's given a small tent to himself, and he tosses and turns as he readjusts to sleeping alone. He does not know whether he regrets his decision or not. It would have been easier to be a slave. He could have killed the wild thing in him and been content in slavery. He could have borne the abuse, grown used to it once more, and learned to please his new master. His life might even have been good. He could have stopped running, stopped fighting, stopped  _hating_ .

But he chose otherwise. Now he wears clothes borrowed from the women of the troupe, because the men are too large. He sleeps in a borrowed tent, under borrowed blankets, and eats food that to the acquisition of he only barely contributes. He is free, but once more he owns nothing and is worth nothing. A burden. He owes a great debt, and it weighs on him; one more weight on his shoulders alongside heartbreak and loneliness and the one pursuer that he has never shaken.

On the third evening, the Qunari's lieutenant approaches Fenris while he is kneeling by the fire, staring into the flames as though they might have answers.

“ _Tevinter es?_ ” is what the lieutenant says to him, and Fenris startles, then stares up at him warily until he sits down. That eases the stare only a little, but the movement is enough to remove Fenris from his daze.

“ _Servus, non civis Imperii sum,_ ” he says, though he has not spoken non-profane Tevene in a long time.

The lieutenant nods. “ _Nunc Liberatum es. Soporatum erat, Fenris, non Altus._ Don't worry.” The switch back to the trade tongue throws Fenris a little, but the lieutenant continues before he can properly adjust. “I know what it's like to feel you don't fit in in that damned country.”

Fenris takes a slow breath. “I would- ask you not speak Tevene to me unless you warn me. The last fluent speaker I conversed with was my old master.”

“Of course,” the lieutenant says. Fenris relaxes a little. “My Tevene's a little rusty anyway. Probably for the best.” Then he smiles, and it's warm and charming, and Fenris relaxes a little more.

“Do you truly believe that?” he asks quietly. “That I am  _Liberati_ ?”

“Of course,” the lieutenant says again, sounding surprised. “Why wouldn't I?”

“You saw- you saw. What I am.” Fenris gestures at himself, frustrated. “I almost did not get up out of the dirt, not even with my- with that magister incapacitated. I shouldn't have needed to think.”

“It's hard to get away from thinking that the way you were born is all you are,” the lieutenant murmurs. “I know that, too. But you're not a slave if you don't want to be, Fenris. No matter what. You get to choose, and you chose to be free.”

Fenris turns that over in his mind. It doesn't quite fit in with all else he knows. He knows he is a slavish creature, if nothing else; he is desperate to serve, and serve well. And even now, he can feel the craving for the drug that brought him so low. Everything was easier that way, and if that state, the ability to be happy in his own servitude, came without the self-hatred and the abuse, he would have stayed. Happily, he would have stayed in slavery, would have served and been content. With Hawke, he had been happy, and he had certainly been a slave for her in many ways.

(At the back of his mind, the wild thing in him whispers that he was  _not_ her slave. She never treated him as such; she hated the idea of it. He was  _free_ when he did those things, and choosing them made him happy.  _He was not a slave._ )

Fenris shakes his head. “Thank you, lieutenant,” he says. “I will think on your words.”

“Call me Krem,” the lieutenant says.

“Krem, then. Thank you.”

 

Word comes weeks after Fenris is taken. Varric gives her a  _look_ during a game of Wicked Grace, and she lingers as the rest of her friends trickle out.

"Where is he?" she demands, and he sighs.

"He was taken by some social climber named Philomelus, apparently. I got word from a contact in a city on the border between Tevinter and Orlais that he'd been seen there, and that he had Fenris."

"I'm going," Marian says immediately, but Varric waves her down.

"You can't," he says, and he sounds so tired. "He's not there any more."

" _What_ ?"

Varric sighs. "My contact told me that Fenris was seen there in the company of the magister, but they were only there for a night. Apparently there was an altercation between Philomelus and a Qunari. The Qunari in question goes by 'The Iron Bull', and he's the leader of some mercenary company."

"And what does that have to do with Fenris?" Marian says, impatient.

"The Qunari took Fenris with him when they left the city," Varric says. He holds up a hand to forestall her exclamation. "My contact thinks he went with them freely. And, Hawke, they're long gone now. This was more than a week ago; there's been no other word."

"So he's gone," Marian says blankly. "He's not coming back."

"I don't know," Varric says. "He's gone with the mercenaries, but he might not stay with them. I'll keep my ears open, see if I can't get any more information about this Qunari and his people. If they have sort of reputation, I'll find out about it."

Marian nods. Her thoughts are spinning, far from her grasp. "I did this," she murmurs, and Varric places a hand on her arm.

"No, you didn't," he says. "Fenris was taken against his will. He has to make his own choices now, but you didn't drive him away. It's not your fault if he stays away- he's going to need some time one way or the other, I think."

"I hurt him," she says.

"Yeah," Varric says, "you did. But you'll see him again, and you can make it up to him. Until then, we've got a city on the brink of _something_ to look after, so why don't we worry about that for a while?"

She knows what he's trying to do. She appreciates it, really- if she can distract herself, she won't dwell so much on her own responsibility for Fenris's situation. No matter what Varric says, she knows she has some fault. She hurt him, said awful things, treated him terribly, and now he's gone. But Kirkwall is, for the time being, still there, and she has a responsibility as the Champion to take care of it. So. She'd do that, and then she'd find the man she loved and bring him home.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translation:
> 
> Krem: You're Tevinter/Are you Tevinter?  
> Fenris: I am a slave, not a citizen of the Imperium.  
> Krem: Now you're Liberati. I was Soporati, Fenris, not Altus.
> 
> *handwaves my shitty Latin* THAT'S TOTALLY TEVENE WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT.
> 
> Comments and kudos always welcome.


	8. Learn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fenris settles in with the Chargers. Sort of.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back again, my friends. No Hawke in this chapter, sadly, but it's an important one. Not... much else to say about it, honestly, it's a bit short.
> 
> I feel I should inform you now: it is my intention to update twice next week, and then I'll be gone for two weeks. I'm going away to Europe, and will not be bringing my laptop, which means I'll have no method of updating. I've written ahead enough that a two week hiatus won't be the end of the world, however. I'm not going to stop writing until I've finished this monster, I promise.
> 
> I feel I should inform people ahead of time that although Fenris makes a slightly victim-blaming-y comment in this chapter, his view of himself does not at all reflect how I view the victims of rape and abuse. He's struggling with it, though.

“Think fast!”

Fenris throws up a hand just in time to catch the hilt of a broadsword, and he twirls it deftly to disperse the momentum. It's not sharp, but it's well-balanced, and he settles easily into a stance. The greatsword is his weapon of choice, but he's handy enough with almost any bladed weapon.

“Good,” Iron Bull says, and then throws a wooden shield. Fenris catches it, but lets it drop from his hand into the dust, then kicks it out of the way.

“I prefer just the sword,” he informs Iron Bull, and swallows his trepidation. But the huge Qunari only nods and gestures for him to step into the centre of camp. Their fire is off to the side a bit, and the other Chargers have turned away from it to watch their boss put the new kid through his paces. Fenris knows this. He's entered new groups before. Hawke's most recently, but his meeting with her was more trial by fire. In Tevinter, though, meeting other magisters' guards or fighting in the competitions, he had dealt with the sort of sizing up that he is about to be subjected to.

“Do you need to warm up?” Iron Bull asks. Fenris rolls his shoulders and bounces on his toes, testing his limber, and then takes a few swings with the sword. He feels okay. He'll need a few days of stretching and reconditioning to get back into real fighting shape, but he's fit for a spar. He tells Iron Bull as much, and seconds later is forced to defend himself as the Iron Bull takes a swing at him with his greatsword. The weapon is as long as Fenris is tall, and he dances backwards. He cannot stay within Bull's guard; he'll need to dart in and out, rely on his quickness and his smaller size. He's strong, he knows, but some opponents are beyond him, and he is out of shape.

The Bull comes on quickly, faster than his size suggests, and Fenris is forced to stay on the defensive, sidestepping, slipping away from the blows he can avoid and parrying the ones he can't with a deft touch. It's not the strained, rapid-fire thing that real battle is. It's been a long time since Fenris has sparred with a warrior that is his match, and the Iron Bull is more than that. Once or twice, Fenris finds himself on his back, cheers from the Chargers ringing in his ears. It would be humiliating, but he always gets back up, shakes the ache from his bones, and keeps fighting. After a while, the Chargers start cheering when he stands up, as well as when he falls down.

The Bull is tireless, but Fenris is not. He feels himself reaching the limits of his depleted endurance, and he shifts his tack, going on a hard offensive. He tries to slip under the Iron Bull's guard, going in low and fast, relying on his size. But the Bull knows how to fight people smaller than him, shifts his huge blade into one hand, and grabs Fenris as he darts in close. Fenris struggles, but the Bull puts him easily on his back, holding him down with a hand and his blade at Fenris's throat.

“Yield?” he asks, and Fenris goes limp. Then he grins ferally, phases in a flare of blue-white light, and thrusts his hands into the Bull's chest. He can feel the flutter of Iron Bull's huge heart against his palms, and gives a gentle squeeze with his fingers, just enough to make the Bull's breath catch.

“Wasn't expecting that,” the Bull admits, and he pulls away. Fenris lets him go, letting the light fade from his skin. “Nice trick.”

Fenris shrugs and rolls to his feet. He's a bit stiff, more than a little sore, but he feels good. It had felt good to move again. “A gift from my first master,” he says. “Lyrium brands.”

The Bull snorts, brushing dust off of his pants. “Worth your weight in gold, aren't you, elf?”

Fenris considers him. “My name is Fenris,” he says, finally. “Use it.”

The Bull considers him in return, and then nods and goes to sit by the fire, a whetstone and his sword in hand. He doesn't say anything more. It's enough.

Krem comes over and claps Fenris on the shoulder. “I haven't seen anyone catch the Chief by surprise in ages!” he crows, and the other Chargers chime in with similar sentiments, dragging Fenris over to the fire with them, sitting him down in their midst and plying him with a bowl of stew and their compliments. The healer, Stitches, asks him a few questions about the lyrium, but Fenris has no real answers for him, and he leaves off when he realizes that Fenris is uncomfortable. It's such a massive change, not only from the honesty that the magister's drug had demanded, but also from Hawke's shameless prying into his past. In a way, he had appreciated her interest. She had cared about him. Wanted to know about him, wanted to know about his hurts so that she could heal them. But she had also pushed, had been bluntly curious about things that had been difficult for him to talk about. Some things he had offered her freely: the Fog Warriors, his inability to read, his hatred of magic and the magisters. Those were his largest shames, the wounds that bled freely and had never really healed. In a way, sharing them was easy, because those hurts lived on the outside of his skin. Those were not the things that festered. What festered was his submission, his fear, his humiliation. The memory of constant terror that he might displease his master, or begging for a beating or a flogging to end, of tears on his face as the magister raped him. Of glowing, sometimes literally, from his master's praise, the pleasure of a gentle touch after a week of deprivation, of how proud he had been of his own loyal service. Those were things he had never spoken to her of, not really. Sometimes a detail had been wrenched from his lips, and he had seen the curiosity in her face: she wanted to ask him for those memories too. Not out of any desire to hurt Fenris, but out of a sort of selfishness that he had never recognized as such, not then.

Fenris shakes away his own dark thoughts. He is surrounded by other fighters now; honest folk, only a single mage among them, and she is far from the malicious power-hungry things that had possessed him for the whole of his life. They have wounds, scars of their own. They know when not to push, unlike Hawke. If they are curious, they ignore it. He has never known anyone who did not demand he pry open his ribs and bare his heart and all the secrets painted on it. Not anyone who was not a slave, anyway; the free have no concept of silence. Or perhaps not just the free who he has known. The Chargers are... his people, in a way he had never known before.

“Thank you,” he murmurs to Krem, as the night drags on. Someone has broken out a bottle of Antivan brandy, and it has made a few rounds on the group. Fenris is far from drunk, but has enough of a buzz behind his eyes to loosen his lips. “For everything you have given me.”

“Some oversized tunics and a thin tent's not much,” Krem says. “Stick around, Fenris. We like you.”

Fenris nods. “That is what I mean. You have- you have given me... a picture of a future I want. For the first time in my life.”

“Like I said,” Krem says. He claps Fenris's shoulder again, but then his hand lingers, squeezing. “Stick around.”

Fenris is quiet for a time. The bottle is passed around again. “Can I?” he says, and Krem startles.

“What?” Krem says.

“I apologize,” Fenris replies on reflex. Then he clarifies, “May I? Stay with you?”

Fenris feels eyes on him, and he and Krem both glance across the fire at the same moment to see the Iron Bull watching them. He grins, then sits back. Krem grins back, then turns the brightness of his smile on Fenris. “Of course,” he says. “I can't say you're a Charger yet, but you're welcome, and I think you'd be a good addition. Never too many bruisers in the crew, and you're faster than the Chief or I, I'd guess. Not to mention, well,” he shrugs, “we like you. I meant that, too, when I said it earlier.”

Fenris nods. He's not sure, not yet, that he believes that there is anywhere in the world that he fits into perfectly except slavery. He is not sure if he deserves to belong among the Chargers, who are worthy indeed, after everything that he has done, and everything of which he has allowed himself to be a victim. But he believes that he can do good work with these people, and help them. He can serve their cause, whatever it may be. For a time, at least, he can be at peace.

 

The elf is a strange creature, but the Iron Bull sees the fighter in him, and the others like him. Krem's a good judge of the group's temperament, and him warming up to Fenris is a good sign. He'll look after the elf, make sure he's doing okay. The Iron Bull would do it himself, but he's big and intimidating and commanding, and he doesn't think Fenris needs a commander. Just a friend.

Stitches had offered Fenris medical attention on that first day and been refused, but the Iron Bull had made Dalish lay magical sleep over Fenris that night so that he could be checked out at least. Stitches had done his exam quietly, privately, and then told Dalish to let the lad sleep naturally. He'd repeated his findings to the Iron Bull just as quietly, just as privately, and for good reason. Callouses from bindings on his wrist and raw skin around his throat where a collar would have been tied; lingering bruises, deep and surely aching; a few fractured and bruised ribs; evidence of a recent and likely violent rape. It was the last the troubled the Iron Bull the most, at the time, but the elf never showed any evidence of aversion to touch, fear of the other men in the company, or any other thing that suggested the trial he'd been through. Not the first time, maybe. Slavery was harsh even to the most homely, and Fenris was appealing to a myriad of tastes. The other wounds Fenris conceals admirably, and Stitches slips elfroot into his tea and lets him be.

After the Iron Bull puts the elf through his paces, his dynamic with the rest of the Chargers shifts. He's less an unobtrusive servant, helping around camp and keeping out of their way, and more a part of the group. He spars with Krem and Grim, stretches in the mornings and the evenings with Dalish and Skinner, and once or twice keeps up drink-for-drink with Rocky, a feat which impresses them all. Tolerance for pain, for alcohol, and for some degree of teasing, the Iron Bull learns. Fenris is neutral in his expression and silent most of the time, but when he does speak, he's intelligent, even witty, and just a little bit charming. He looks lost at times, pained at others, but mostly he seems okay. The problem is, even the Iron Bull can't tell how much of that is a slave's mask, and how much is him actually being okay. Fenris has surely learned how to hide his emotions away, and the Iron Bull can't read his mind. He's not sure what the elf is thinking, a lot of the time; it makes it hard to know what he needs to be comfortable in the group.

Fenris has his moments. The Iron Bull watches him carefully for the first fortnight that he's with their company, and then a little less carefully, but still  _with care_ . Because he has his moments of anger, of frustration, where he snaps at Dalish or withdraws so quickly from a conversation that it's like a slap in the face for whoever he was talking to. More so because he has his moments where he bends his neck, obeys without question, shuts away his own discomfort, goes out of his way to make something easier for another Charger. It's not a noticeable thing. It's not meant to be noticeable; the Iron Bull remembers a saying about how children should be seen but not heard, and slaves should be neither. Fenris is used to providing invisible service, and he's good at it. Tending the fire when others' attention drifts away, taking a few too many night watch shifts, pitching his tent a distance from the others. He stays out of their way, integrates with the company only so much, and keeps to himself the rest of the time.

(Once, the Iron Bull gets up in the night and stands next to Fenris's tent for a while, and listens to him whimper quietly through his nightmares and wake gasping. Then there is such profound silence that the Iron Bull thinks he's stopped breathing until he hears the elf's slightly wheezy breaths through the tent wall as sleep finds him again. It's disturbing as fuck, but he can't exactly bring up the fact that he was listening to the kid sleep, and maybe he should be bunking with someone else, so that there'll be someone there to wake him if he gets trapped in a dream.)

The Iron Bull doesn't know, really, how to break down the wall. His Ben-Hassrath training is good for subtle manipulation, but Fenris has been manipulated enough in his life. And who knows if the blunt approach will work? Krem has taken Fenris under his wing, and friendliness has woven a bond, but it hasn't broken the fortified barrier that keeps Fenris locked away. He's not spiralling down, the Iron Bull thinks. But he's not really getting better, either. Something's got to give before anything can be done.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments and kudos always welcome.


	9. Break

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Something gives.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AO3 is being weird, if this posts twice I'm sorry.
> 
> Anyway: Hawke is back! Also, a reminder that I will be posting on Monday and Friday this week, and then not at all for two weeks. I'll be in Europe until the 15th of June, and I should post the Wednesday after I get back, provided I'm not too jetlagged to think.

It's a bad sign, possibly, that Fenris  _feels_ his ribs give beneath the warhammer blow. At least four broken, he thinks, and then the pain takes him. He doesn't scream, but the crunch of the weapon connecting with his body, the thump as he hits the ground, the clang of his sword against his attacker's greaves as it is wrenched from loose fingers by the force of his fall- all those things alert the other Chargers to his predicament. He thinks he hears Krem shout his name over the ringing in his ears. A second later, there's a crunch, and then the huge armoured bandit that had taken Fenris down lands in the dirt beside him, his skull crushed. Krem's doing, surely.

There is nothing but pain. Every breath is agony, and when someone rolls him onto his back, a choked scream is finally torn from his lips. _Stay quiet, stay quiet_ , the subservient thing in his mind is chanting. _Don't let them see_. But Fenris has no choice, not really. Broken ribs, plenty of internal bleeding if the taste of iron in his mouth is anything to go by. This is not a wound that can be walked off, and Dalish is no healer, for all her prowess with ice and lightning. If this is how he dies, fallen on the field of battle taking a blow for a good friend, then he is at peace.

Fenris wakes. He does not remember having fallen asleep. There is a bed beneath him, a proper one, and it smells like lye soap and lavender. He keeps his eyes closed, listening carefully, but he hears no movement, no breath but his own.

He opens his eyes, makes a quick sweep of the room. His gaze settles on the far corner, where the Iron Bull sits, watching him. Fenris tenses, terrified for a moment that he could not detect the other man's huge presence, and the movement lights his chest on fire. A tiny cry passes his lips, and he throws his head back, fighting to smother the pain back into something manageable.

"Easy," comes Bull's rumbling voice, and Fenris bites his own lip, hard enough to draw blood. "Easy, I said," the Iron Bull says again, and drags his chair over to the bedside. He waits as Fenris masters himself once again, and then says, "Can you speak?"

Fenris draws a shallow breath, and tries to say, "Yes." It comes out as a ragged whisper, and the Iron Bull nods and reaches for something. It turns out to be a glass filled with some half-melted chips of ice. He brings a few to Fenris's lips, helping him drink, and then says, "Better?"

"Yes," Fenris says. His voice is still a whisper, but slightly louder and more intelligible. "What happened?"

"That big fucker with a hammer came up behind Krem while he was wrestling with the assassin, and you took a blow for him. We haven't found you a proper kit yet, so the blow and the fall totalled you five broken ribs and two bruised ones, plus a concussion, more than enough internal bleeding, and a few scrapes, bumps, and bruises. You're in rough shape."

Fenris swallows. "Oh," he says. "Did Stitches...?"

The Iron Bull nods, pauses, and then shakes his head. "He and Dalish did what they could to stabilize you, but your condition was dodgy at best. We managed to make it back to the city, dragged you to the Chantry, and demanded the services of a healer-mage. It just so happened that there were two in residence at the little Circle they've got here, and they were able to patch you up."

"Magic," Fenris whispers, sounding wretched. "I did not consent."

"No, you didn't," the Iron Bull says. "Would you rather be dead?"

There's a long pause, while Fenris turns that over. He's so _fucking_ finished with having magic used on him against his will. But he's not ready to die, not just yet. "No," he says. "How long have I slept?"

"Three days," Bull says. "It'd have been less, but they sedated you straight to the Void after you spent most of the time they spent treating you undoing all their work." He shrugs. "I'd've asked them to wake you sooner, but it wouldn't have been a favour. Your ribs are still broken, and you're pretty beat up inside. You're gonna need some time to heal, and you'd have been in a lot of pain if they'd let you stay awake."

Fenris inclines his head a small amount, though it bothers him to know that he's been held in magical sleep. The Iron Bull seems to pick up on something in Fenris's expression, because his gaze sharpens. "Does it bother you?"

"Yes," Fenris says, automatically honest.

"What part? The magic, or the fact that someone else was making decisions about what happened to you?"

Fenris's lips twist. "Both," he rasps.

"Is it me? Would you have been okay with it if it were Krem, or Skinner?" Bull sounds honestly curious, which is interesting. He's a perceptive man, that much Fenris has picked up on, but perhaps there are some answers he cannot simply read from Fenris's face.

"I don't know," Fenris says. That is the truth too, though not so involuntarily proffered as before. He leashes his instincts as best he can, and struggles to find the words for what he feels. "I am not- I am used to people deciding for me. You are in a position of power over me. I accept that. It is a comfort, in a way; the comfort of the familiar. But Krem, Skinner- they seem to care for me. It is... a different sort of power."

"Taking orders is easy," the Bull says, and sits back, his hands on his knees. Fenris watches him out of the corner of his eye. "Caring about people, trusting them- that's a lot harder. I get that."

"I know," Fenris says. He searches for more words, but there are none. "I know."

Bull only inclines his head, and lets Fenris turn their conversation over in his mind without interrupting. Fenris is aching and feels sick and wretched, the way he always does after magical healing. It affects the lyrium strangely, and he can feels the residual energy beneath his skin now that he's paying attention to it. Between that, a few days without food, the lingering pain of his injuries, and the discomfort that lies like a blanket over his thoughts, Fenris is far from okay. He wishes things were simpler. He has stopped wishing that he had stayed with the blue-eyed magister in the weeks he has been with the Chargers, but only because he has managed to find some small fulfillment in serving them. He's content, but not happy. He doesn't know how to be happy. And now he'll be trapped in bed for a few days, knowing Stitches, with nothing to do but think. He doesn't want that. Not for the first time, he feels a swell of longing for the submissive oblivion of the red potion. That, for all that it had twisted him, had at least granted him peace.

"There's something else," the Iron Bull says. "You mentioned to the others that you spent some time in Kirkwall."

Fenris inclines his head. "I lived there for some years, yes. I have... friends there."

The Bull gives him a measuring look, then says, "Word is there's been a mess."

"There's always a mess. It's Kirkwall."

The look Bull gives him says, _Fair enough_. "Bigger mess than usual," is what comes out of his mouth. "Some apostate blew up the Chantry. The Grand Cleric's dead, along with the Knight-Commander, the First Enchanter, and half the Templars and the mages in the city."

"What!?" Fenris says, and sits forward. Pain shoots through his chest again, and he is forced to lean back once more. "When?"

"Word came two days ago. The incident was probably a week or two ago, if I'm guessing right at the rate that the news's travelled," Bull says. "I don't know much yet, but more news will trickle in as time passes. I'll keep you updated?"

Fenris nods. Then, hesitantly, he asks, "Is there word on the Champion?"

Bull frowns. "Not much. I heard a whisper that she might have been involved with the apostate who did it."

Fenris swallows hard, holding back against hissing the name of the man that he had suspected, and now _knows_ , was responsible. _Anders_. "Thank you," he says, when he has regained some composure. The Iron Bull is giving him that look that says that he knows Fenris is hiding something, and is actively refraining from prying. "For telling me. Let me know when you know more. I have friends in Kirkwall still."

"Sure," Bull says, and then he rises. "I'll get Stitches in here to take a look at you. Rest up, Fenris."

"Thank you, Bull," Fenris says, and shortly he is alone, his thoughts far-flung to Kirkwall.

 

Marian is filthy and there is blood on her face, and she can still taste the ash and dust that had filled the air in Kirkwall after the explosion, as the city erupted into vicious fighting. Slowly, it is all being washed away by sea air, the wind tangling her hair and stealing her breath, but slowly isn't enough for her. She's not sure what to think- she is caught, bouncing between worry for Orana, left behind in the mansion, and grief for the mages who were cut down, who had given into despair, and worse, those who _hadn't had time_. She had fought to defend them. Always, she had stood up for them, for Orsino, against Meredith. In the end, it hadn't been enough. Kirkwall is burning, and she had been forced to leave it all behind. Knight-Captain Cullen's leniency had only bought them so much time, and she had taken nothing but herself and her friends to the docks, and then Isabela had taken them away.

Anders is unconscious below the deck, one of Merrill's sleeping spells keeping him that way. Marian likes him, loves him as a friend and like a brother, but knows she cannot afford to trust him. Cannot afford to kill him, not if she wants to keep her own heart whole, but cannot trust him. To her relief, he had submitted to the magic easily, and she could take a breath and decide what they would do with him. None of them truly approve of what he had done, but Marian at least understands. He had wanted freedom. So had her father. So does she. She does not regret his actions, because desperate times called for desperate measures, and desperate times had come on a tide of red lyrium madness. She regrets the loss of life, though. She regrets the loss of her home once again, and she regrets that this kind of action will only mean more running, more fighting. There is no place in Thedas that will not be touched by this, she thinks, and looks out at the sea, and sighs.

“Hey, Hawke,” comes Varric's voice, and she turns to look down at him. He looks a little queasy, uncomfortable on the sea, but his presence is a balm.

“Varric,” she says. “How are you?”

“Seasick,” he says, and shrugs. “Well enough, other than that. What about you?”

She shakes her head. “I don't know,” she says. “I'm- torn.”

“Makes sense,” Varric says. “Blondie fucked up, that's for sure.”

Marian frowns. “I can't truly blame him though, can I? He's... not himself, hasn't been himself in years. He and Justice have changed each other. Between that and his past, and everything we've seen in Kirkwall, I cannot blame him for taking action. In a way, I wish I'd done more myself.”

Varric gives her a severe look. “You can't say what he did was right, though. This was too much.”

“I know,” Marian sighs. “I know. Anders is sick, and what he did was wrong. Something will need to be done about him, but I couldn't kill him. You understand that, don't you?”

“He's your friend.” Varric shrugs. “I can't pass judgement; I don't know what I'd have done in your place.”

“What would you do now?” Marian asks. “If you were me?”

“I don't know, Hawke.” He meets her gaze, a wry look on his face. She and Varric have never been as close as she was to Fenris, Anders, or Merrill. “You've got to make your own choices.”

Marian bows her head. “Like Fenris.”

“Yeah,” he says, and stares out at the waves. “Like Fenris.”

There's been no word. Not anything meaningful; reports from Varric contacts from time to time on the reputation of the Chargers, the mercenary company that Fenris is travelling with. They're fairly well-known, and Varric hasn't heard anything bad about them, but it still makes Marian ache, knowing that he is travelling with a group of people she doesn't know, who have no connection to their life together. He has cut himself away from her, and doesn't seem interested in reaching back out. No letter from him, even since he was freed, and now there is only the faintest hope they will ever be reunited. She has to go into hiding, for fear of the wrath of the Chantry, and the Chargers, for all that they seem free-rambling and are lead by a Qunari, cannot be trusted. By default, _Fenris_ cannot be trusted with her location, with any details of her plans.

It's a call back to days she had not enjoyed. When they'd first met, she hadn't entirely trusted him, but she'd liked him. She'd wanted to get to know him, despite his prickly exterior and his apparent hatred of her kind. He'd reminded her a little of her brother, and after losing Carver to the Wardens, she had gravitated toward him all the more, taken by his charm and his striking looks. She'd wanted to ease her own loneliness and escape her mother's bitter grief, and he had offered a haven.

Now he was gone. She had spent weeks waking every morning expecting him to be there, a warm presence in the bed beside her, and had to come to terms all over again with his absence when she found the sheets beside her cold. Now, those mornings come less and less often. She misses him no less, but it is fading into a familiar sort of missing; the kind of missing she feels toward her father, her sister, her brother, her mother. They're gone now, most of them ghosts; only Carver still lives and he is far out of her reach, living a life far from her shadow. Fenris will be that soon, only the remnant of a living spirit, a shadow of fading warmth, and she is empty.

“Hawke?”

“Sorry, Varric,” she says, and looks back to him. “I got distracted. Did you say something?”

He shakes his head, and says, “You looked- well. I figured it would be better to pull you out.”

“Sorry,” she murmurs again. “I don't know if I've ever know what the right thing to do is, but I'm going to keep trying to do it. That's enough, right?”

“That's all you can do, Hawke,” Varric says, and though she cannot say that his words are reassuring, it's enough. It's enough for the time being, to get her through the loss of her home and her lover and everything else that ever seemed good, except for the few friends she has left. Merrill will leave them in Ferelden, Aveline stayed in Kirkwall, and Isabela will stay on the sea. Marian doesn't know what Varric will do, nor Anders, nor herself. She'll have to stay with someone, or she'll go mad. That's all she's sure of. That will be enough. It will. It has to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments and kudos always welcome.


	10. Run

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The beginning of the end, as it were.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I CANNOT BELIEVE I FORGOT TO UPDATE YESTERDAY I SWEAR I MEANT TO I AM SO SORRY
> 
> HERE IS THE CHAPTER. 
> 
> Final reminder that there will be NO UPDATES for TWO WEEKS after this, as I will be in Europe on vacation. I thank you all in advance for your patience. Please enjoy the chapter.

Time passes. Fenris recovers slowly. He outright rejects any further magical healing, and because they have just finished a job, the Iron Bull humours him. They stay in the city, allowing Fenris to convalesce in something resembling comfort, and make themselves at home in a local tavern. Fenris sleeps, mostly, because several of his ribs are still cracked, and he is bruised and tender inside. He's not very mobile, but sometimes he manages to drag himself from his bed and goes downstairs to sit with the others, and though they don't touch him, they are warm and welcoming. Stitches huffs about his injuries, and Krem sits next to him and provides a warm, solid support for Fenris to lean on if he needs it, and the Bull watches over them all with the air of a proud and protective older brother. They feel like family, those warm evenings filled with laughter and song, and Fenris is happier there than he has been in a long time.

Still, the nights are filled with terrors, and his dreams are troubled at best. Mostly he does not remember them; he wakes drenched in cold sweat and panting, his ribs aching, and there is nothing but a hazy sense of fear and sickness left of the dreams. Some dreams he does remember. Once he dreams of Hawke, reaching between his legs and grabbing hard, digging in with her nails. As he writhes, her voices echoes in his ears, _You're mine, Fenris; this is mine_. Another time it is the Iron Bull, a wall of heat behind him, nothing but his hands hard around Fenris's throat and his voice, _You deserve a choice, elf. So choose._ Always he wakes shaking, sweating, terrified. The night terrors make him thrash, and he knows his ribs are healing slowly because of it, too slowly. He tries not to sleep, so as to avoid the dreams. He lies tense and still in his bed at night, and the bruises under his eyes grow darker day by day. Memories begin to flit in all more often during the daylight hours, most often when someone touches him without warning. Fenris is in constant pain, but rejects any attempts by Stitches even to diagnose him, never mind ease it. He does not want to be touched. The lyrium itches, and after he scratches himself to bleeding trying to ease it, he avoids even his own touch.

He doesn't notice the others noticing. Fenris is wrapped up in his own head, trying to fight off this resurgence of his demons, and he does not see the concern in Krem's face, the way Stitches hovers, or the Iron Bull's steady, subtle watch; he never takes up the offer that is inherent in any of these things.

There are other things, though, that Fenris does notice. He notices that Skinner sometimes narrows her eyes at him, that Grim has been keeping his distance more than ever, that Dalish carries her staff more openly. Suddenly there is a tension in the group that wasn't there before, and he thinks he knows the cause. Once, he catches the end of a conversation held in low voices by Krem and the Bull.

"-you sure?" Krem is saying.

"There's nothing for it," the Iron Bull replies. He sounds regretful. "If he can't do it, then he can't- we can wait a little longer, but not much. If it means he has to go, then so be it."

"But Fenris is-"

And then the Iron Bull glances over Krem's shoulder, sees Fenris listening, and silences Krem with a wave of his hand. "Another time," he says, and walks away, leaving Krem to turn and see Fenris for himself.

Fenris doesn't know what shows on his face, but whatever it is makes Krem flinch.

"Fenris," he starts, "I'm sorry, I only wanted-"

"It is fine," Fenris says gruffly, cutting him off. "You and the Iron Bull will do what you must."

There's sorrow on Krem's face, and that only makes it worse. Fenris has come to consider this man a friend, though they have only known each other some weeks, and Fenris has held himself distant. He likes Krem just as much as Krem likes Fenris. But he suspects he knows what their conversation was about, what Krem is apologizing for. They're going to get rid of him.

Fenris has taken days to recover, days that the Chargers could be travelling, seeking out new work. He's only fought with them a few times, and he made a stupid mistake and nearly got himself killed so early on in their acquaintance that the Iron Bull must see him as a liability and a weakness. They cannot possibly trust him, not when he has hidden so much about himself. The Iron Bull might suspect him to be connected to the events in Kirkwall, after their conversation; he might also suspect him to be a magister's spy. After all, he is a slave. Was. Was a slave. When they found him.

Fenris doesn't know what to do. He's not a Charger, he _knows_ that he is not a Charger, but that does nothing to change the fact that he wants to be. He is interested in these people, has come to care for them on some level, and they granted him freedom just when he was beginning to believe that he would never be free again. He fights well with them. They are strong, protective, funny, sweet, caring, _warm._ More, even, than Hawke was, because in that group there was strife, always. People he could not stand, could never be comfortable with. Coming to be friends with them, to _love_ them, those of them he loved, had been a slow and laborious process, and in some ways they had never really all fit together. Not the way the Chargers do. Not the way that Fenris had thought that he might fit with the Chargers.

He retreats to his room, locks the door behind him, tries to calm his breathing. He cannot. He cannot- cannot breathe, and he stumbles to his bed, collapses on his side with his legs half off the mattress. One arm wraps around his ribs, but he cannot slow his breathing, and black spots fill his vision. All he can think is, _They'll leave me behind._ He's never been left behind before. Always, always, he has done the leaving. He loses consciousness eventually, mercifully.

When he wakes, it is to the sound of someone pounding on his door. His left side, on which he has been lying, feels like fire, but he drags himself up and goes to the door. When he opens it, Krem is standing on the other side, Stitches behind him and a slightly manic light in his eyes.

"Thank the Maker," Krem says. "I was about to kick the door down. Fenris, are you okay?"

Fenris nods. "I am fine," he says. His voice is breathless with pain, and he knows both of them notice. Stitches's hands twitch. "Leave me."

"Fenris-"

"I am _fine_ ," Fenris insists. "Leave me be, Cremisius."

It's the first time he's used Krem's full name. It strikes the other man like a physical blow, and he steps back from the doorway. "Of course," he says, quietly. "I'm sorry."

"You need me to look at you?" Stitches says, and Fenris realizes that he is still holding his ribs, one arm wrapped around himself. He drops his arm.

"No," Fenris says. Then he slams the door in their faces and locks it once more. He swallows back the panic he feels rising in himself once more, and goes to sit by the bed. He cannot stay there for long- some force drives him to his knees, and he kneels there beside the bed. His breath comes a little easier, then, and he leans his forehead against the rumbled blankets.

He has forgotten every lesson he learned as a slave. The first one was _want nothing_. The second, _never become attached_. The third, and possibly the most important, was _be useful_. There are addendums to these: do not overstep, feel nothing, be grateful. If there is anything you have, anything you love, do not share it. Know that what you are is all you will ever be. The last he has discarded, and will never take up again, not even for his life. In joining the Iron Bull he has proved that much to himself, at least. The others, though, served him well during the years between Seheron and Kirkwall, and sometimes even after meeting Hawke. Perhaps they would have served him better if he had remembered them; he had thrown away all of them in order to be with her, to glory in everything she gave him. He still loves her for that. She made him free. He was a man with her, not a slave. And yet, his love and hers had twined together into a new kind of slavery, and he does not know how to free himself. With the absence of the one came the other, and now in the absence of the other the one returns. He has become what he was once more, without Hawke to hold back the tide.

Fenris closes his eyes. He has most free, maybe, when he was alone. With no one, he could have no master. There would be no one to be useful to except himself. That is an inarguable sort of freedom, he thinks, and digs deep into what little resolve that has been left to him by pain and exhaustion and memory. Then he gets up, and goes to see the Iron Bull.

The Bull is waiting for him, or so it seems. Alone in the room he has claimed for himself, sitting on the bed and sharpening his blade.

"Iron Bull," Fenris says from the doorway. The Iron Bull looks up, meets Fenris's eyes, and gestures him inside. Fenris closes the door behind him.

"Need something, Fenris?" the Bull asks.

Fenris swallows and grasps his resolve just a little harder. There is thick strapping beneath his shirt, he is barely standing, and he is still in agony. "Only to know- to know if you will grant me a sword."

The Iron Bull raises an eyebrow. "Are you not happy with the one you've got? It's not a bad blade."

Fenris shakes his head. "Do not purposefully misunderstand me, please. I know you are more intelligent than that."

"I don't think I am, actually," the Bull says, and sets aside his sword. "What are we talking about here, Fenris?"

"When I go," Fenris says. The words ache as he forces them from his chest, drag in his throat, threaten to stall behind his teeth. "When I go, will you grant me a sword? I can fight weaponless, of course, but I am... still injured."

The Bull's frown deepens until it looks almost genuine. "You still have broken ribs," he says, and gestures at Fenris. His posture must still be stiff and ginger, Fenris realizes, and tries to relax, to stand naturally. It hurts too much. "If you want to go, you're free to, but I don't think that's a good idea."

"You are being deliberately obtuse," Fenris grinds out. "You have no- no intention of keeping me. Keeping me on. I am only asking the dignity of- the- I do not wish to force you from town if you still have business here. I will go."

"Fenris, what are you talking about?" The Bull sounds bewildered now, and he leans forward. Fenris takes a step back, enough that his back is nearly pressed against the wall. "Where's this coming from?"

"Do not," Fenris says. He feels lightheaded. He does not want to be lied to, not any more.

"I'm not lying to you," Bull says. Fenris blinks and realizes that the Bull has stood and taken several steps toward him. Where had the time gone, he wonders. He steps back again, pressing against the door. The Bull stops as well, holds his hands up in a placating gesture. "I'm not coming any closer, I promise," he says. "But you need to tell me what's going on here, Fenris."

"I cannot," Fenris gasps. "I cannot be left. I have never- let me go. Let me go."

The Bull narrows his eyes. "You can go, Fenris, if you want. I said that."

Fenris scrabbles with one hand for the doorknob. It takes long seconds for him to find it, and once he does, he is hardly able to pull away from the door to pull it open. "I'm sorry," he says. "I wish I could have been-"

There are no more words. He turns and flees, though his flight is stumbling and weak, barely worthy of that description. More a retreat than anything, and a limping one. It is utterly embarrassing; he can feel the Iron Bull's eyes on his back the entire distance. He does not go back to his room. On the way down through the inn, he nearly falls down the stairs, then trips into someone broad and soft, who exclaims. Whatever they say is lost to the grey haze that fills Fenris's mind. He doesn't know what he's going to do now, he only knows that he must get out, must go before it is too late and they leave him. He has lost everything. He has cost himself everything.

He makes it out into the dusty street, and finds that although the sun is too bright, he cannot lift his arm to shield his eyes. One is wrapped tight around his side, trying to bolster his broken ribs, his broken heart, and the other hands loose at his side, no strength left to give. He takes two stumbling steps and falls to his knees. It is so comfortable there, as if it were where he belongs. He does belong there, on his knees. A creature crawling in the dust, waiting for master to bring him home. His head drops, chin against his chest, and he breathes.

There are running footsteps behind him, then Krem falls to his knees in front of Fenris. This seems wrong. Krem should stand. "Fenris!" he cries. His voice is pitched higher than usual in his upset. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," Fenris says. "I am- fine. I must go."

"You can't even walk, Fenris- where do you have to go that's so urgent?"

"Away," Fenris says. "Before you can leave me. I must go. I have nothing left but my dignity, and not even that."

"Krem." The Iron Bull's voice is commanding. Krem's head jerks up.

"I didn't expect it to be like this," he says. That doesn't make much sense to Fenris. "What can we do?"

"Come away from him. You're not what he needs right now- save it for after."

Krem nods and rises. Fenris remembers that kind of devotion. The sort that let him obey without question, without concern. It was a release and a terrifying shackle.

When Krem is gone, a hand comes down on the back of Fenris's neck. Huge and hot, surely belonging to the Iron Bull. Fenris shudders. "Come inside," the Iron Bull says. "I'm going to put you to bed, and when you wake up, we'll see how you're doing. Got it?"

"But-" Fenris begins. The hand on his neck tightens, strangling the words before they come. The lyrium brands at the base of his neck burn under the Iron Bull's touch.

"I'm going to lift you," the Iron Bull warns, and then he does so, scooping Fenris up out of the dirt as if he weighs nothing, and maybe he does. He has been skipping meals, he knows. He's had no desire to eat, between the pain and the tiredness.

Fenris watches with half-lidded eyes as he is carried back through the tavern. A few other patrons are staring, but those are not the gazes he cares about. Instead, he sees the Chargers watching, all of them standing, silent and solemn as Fenris is brought past them. He is a burden again, a loose weight in the Iron Bull's arms, and he is so sick with himself.

"Do I need to tie you to the bed?" the Iron Bull asks, when he has gained Fenris's room and placed him on the mattress. He slings a light blanket over Fenris's body.

"No," Fenris says. "Unless you wish to."

Something flickers around the corner's of the Iron Bull's eyes and mouth, but Fenris cannot decipher it. Not that he can ever decipher this man. He does not know what is going on. Everything is wrong. "I don't wish to," the Iron Bull says. "What I _wish_ is for you to sleep. So. Sleep. And we'll talk when you wake up."

Fenris nods. "Yes, ser," he says quietly, and then he closes his eyes. Sleep comes with surprising ease, and he tumbles into darkness once more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments and kudos always welcome.


	11. Sleep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An interlude, mostly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The triumphant return! I'm finally back from Europe, I had a great time, blah blah blah. I did some writing while I was away, but mostly of the "deleted scenes and only-vaguely-in-this-'verse" kind. Still, I'll work on typing that stuff up and posting it in the next week or so. I'm going to throw anything BaB-ish into a series listing, so watch for that.
> 
> This is a fairly short chapter, if I recall correctly, and it's also a pretty experimental one- I was trying out character POVs that I don't have a lot of experience with, so you'll have to tell me what you think. Enjoy!

Anders has never in his life, until now, slept without dreaming. He wakes and remembers nothing but the void, and is pitifully grateful for it. Justice has been more and more active in his sleeping hours in the last few years, and he has gotten very little chance for real rest. He feels more real, more himself, when he wakes in the swaying hold of Isabela's ship, and opens his eyes to find Hawke standing over him.

“Anders,” she says.

“Hawke,” he croaks. He clears his throat and tries again. “Hawke. I'm sorry.”

“No, you're not,” she says, and he can't entirely argue with her. “I don't want you to be, really. If you were, it wouldn't be you.”

He turns his face into the rough pillow he's been given. A small mercy; he expected to find himself curled on the hard floor, bound and left in solitude. But Hawke is no Templar, he reminds himself. She was invested in the fight for freedom too, and would never inflict those same cruelties on him. He should really wait until they make port, incapacitate her, and run; she cannot be trusted.

_No, Justice_ , Anders thinks firmly. He's grown more used to those intrusive thoughts. They sound more and more like his own thoughts all the time, but he's still able to distinguish them. “I'm sorry for the lives of the innocents,” Anders says, out loud. “I knew there would be collateral, and I'm no more happy about that than you are. You should have killed me, Hawke.”

“You're my friend, Anders. I wasn't going to put a knife in your back,” she says. She's beautiful, even in the dim light of the ship's hold. Even with a smear of mud or blood hiding behind her ear, and her hair dishevelled. She's usually so put together, so graceful and lovely in her robes, her strength evident in her broad palms and steady, straight shoulders. Here, now, she is not the Champion, merely a woman.

“Thank you,” he says. He's not sure if he means it. Some part of him wants to die. He has made a monster of himself, and life will be infinitely more difficult in the wake of the Chantry explosion. “What happens now?”

Hawke shrugs. “That's up to you,” she says. “We've been at sea a few days. We're headed for Ferelden. Merrill is planning to go off on her own, to find more of the Dalish. If I'm guessing right, she'll probably make her way back to Kirkwall eventually. Varric, too. Aveline stayed behind, and Isabela's not likely to give up the _Siren's Call_ and the sea now that she has them back. So, it's down to you and me.”

“You would be willing to travel with me?” Anders asks hoarsely. “After everything I've cost you?”

“You've cost me very little,” Hawke says. “An estate that I never cared for, wealth that was nice but unnecessary, a city that was never my home.”

“Are you thinking of going after Fenris?”

Hawke looks down, a pensive expression on her face. “I don't know,” she says finally. “I was considering going northwest into Orlais, but I have business with the King of Ferelden first, I should think. Fenris... He hasn't sent word that he's planning on returning. I can't wait for him forever.”

Anders cannot help the flare of hope in him. It is ruthlessly quelled a moment later, more by Justice's will than his own, he suspects. The spirit has never entirely approved of his love for Hawke. “No,” Anders says. “Have you heard anything?”

“I suppose you've been a bit out of touch the last few weeks,” she says. “He's travelling with a mercenary company called Bull's Chargers. I don't know much about how he fares.”

“So, we could- we could travel together? If you wished to find him, I would be willing to accompany you, but I don't know how well I'd be received if we found him,” Anders says.

“Not well,” Hawke says, and laughs a little. The sound is heartening. Anders has missed her laughter. “We'll go together, Anders. We'll see what the world knows when we disembark. At the very least, Ferelden treats its mages well, and we might be able to continue our work with the underground.”

“I'll be on the run,” Anders says. “You won't be safe with me, Hawke.”

“Why are you trying to convince me to leave you?” Hawke asks. Anders had been asking himself the same thing. “I would have thought you'd want my company.”

“I do,” Anders says. “Of course I do. I just want you to be sure, Hawke. I couldn't stand to be the cause of your suffering.”

She smiles wryly. “You've never been that, Anders. We'll be okay.”

He nods, then watches her as she goes. After years of watching her back and knowing that she'll lead him well, it's a familiar sight, and comforting.

 

Fenris tosses and turns, restless from the fever that grips him. They had had to tie him down to keep him from thrashing too much, and Krem is only grateful that he doesn't have enough presence of mind to phase through the bonds. That would be a real nightmare.

It's almost distressing how quickly he's come to care for Fenris. The elf doesn't even know about Krem's past, and yet the beginnings of a true friendship have blossomed easily between them. Seeing Fenris in this kind of distress is as hard as it would be to see any of the Chargers this way, made all the worse by the fact that there is literally nothing Krem can do for him beside keep a steady watch and shout for Stitches if anything happens. Bull sits with him sometimes, or Dalish, or Skinner, both of whom have grown fond of Fenris as well. Grim has taken guard duty upon himself, and stands sentry outside Fenris's door.

They've been waiting for this break to come. The Chief had told Krem a little about the poison that magister had been feeding Fenris- it would linger in his system, possibly for weeks. The withdrawal, when it came, would be sudden and harsh. After Fenris's injury, when his condition seemed to be getting worse rather than better, Bull had pulled Krem aside and warned him that things would be much worse before they got better- that his injury would exacerbate his symptoms. They'd need to be careful with Fenris, give him space, and keep a close eye on him.

Krem hadn't expected this. Fenris had been so distraught, so clearly in pain and exhausted, run down to the very bottom of his spirit. He'd held out against the despair for a long time, and when the wave had come, it had broken so hard on the shore that all of Fenris's defences had been washed away. This was what the drug did, Bull had explained. It broke people down and rebuilt them into something malleable. Eventually, the magister would have put Fenris through this on purpose, though he'd not have let it get to the point of the fever. Just enough that Fenris was feeling isolated and abandoned, panicked and wretched, and then he would have opened his arms, and Fenris would have gone willingly, for that moment and forever. He'd had to navigate those moments on the street carefully, because if he hadn't, they might have ended up with a thrall instead of a friend. But the fever had come without Fenris forming a solid anchor to any one of them, and when he wakes, he'll be truly free.

If he wakes. Krem buries his face in his hands. There was no guarantee that Fenris would survive the fever, what with his injuries, his exhaustion, and the meals he's been skipping. He's weaker than he's ever been, and the fever is strong. Maybe too strong. They can only wrap him in blankets and feed him honey water, and pray. Krem has never considered himself particularly devout, but right now, every other thought is a plea to the Maker. He wants a chance to  _know_ Fenris, to bond with him the way he has with all the rest of the Chargers. He wants to see Fenris survive and thrive among them. It could be so good. But only if Fenris lives.

A soft sound from the bed, different from shallow, raspy breathing and the rustle of cloth, draws Krem's attention. He looks up and meets hazy sage green eyes. “Fenris,” he says, startled, and leans forward in his chair.

“Marian?” Fenris whispers, and Krem shakes his head.

“Only me,” he says. He's not sure who Marian is, but it's surely someone important; Fenris holds his secrets close, and this woman must be one of them.

“Krem,” Fenris murmurs. “Sorry.”

“Don't apologize,” Krem says. “You should go back to sleep, Fenris. You're not well.”

“M'sorry,” Fenris says again. His speech is almost too slurred to understand. “Meant t'be better. Wanted t'be good.”

“You are good,” Krem says. He reaches forward and lays a gentle hand over Fenris's. It takes him a moment, but Fenris manages to turn his wrist so that his hand lies palm up, and he grasps Krem's hand as best he can. It makes Krem swallow, and he returns the grip. “You're a good friend, Fenris. You're strong. You can beat this.”

Fenris only takes another gasping breath. His lips are dry and chapped, and his cheeks are flushed. Krem watches carefully, waiting to see if Fenris will respond, but he doesn't say anything else. It takes a while, but eventually his eyes slip closed, and his breathing eases a little. Asleep again, and Krem relaxes. He doesn't let go of Fenris's hand, though. He's a tactile person with those he trusts, and he's come to trust Fenris. Not with all his secrets, not yet, but certainly with his life. After what happened, of course he trusts Fenris with his life. He  _owes_ Fenris his life.

There's the sound of footsteps at the door, and Krem looks up to see Dalish, followed by the Chief. Dalish sidles up to him and plops herself into his lap, leaning back against him and propping her feet on the bed next to Fenris's hip. Krem wraps an arm around her waist to hold her steady, and turns his attention to the Chief.

"How's he doing?" Bull asks, coming to stand at the foot of the bed. He doesn't look troubled, but then, the Chief never does.

"He was awake for a minute," Krem offers. "Said a few things. He's pretty out of it still."

Bull nods. "Makes sense," he says. "Fever's still gonna spike before it breaks. That'll be the worst of it."

Krem sighs shallowly, his chest slightly compressed by Dalish. She's warm and comforting, and just as tactile as he is; she always knows what he needs. He's grateful for his friends. "Is he going to die?" he asks quietly.

"I don't know," Bull says. "It's on him to fight or die, Krem. We don't get to choose."

"That's a recurring theme with him," Krem says, and squeezes the slender, dark-skinned hand that he's still holding. "I just wish there was some way to  _know_ ."

"No use in agonizing over things you can't change." The Chief comes over and claps a hand on the base of Krem's neck. The familiar gesture relaxes him further, and he's able to look at Fenris's dream-troubled face without flinching once more.

"Guess not," Krem says, and grips onto Dalish a little harder. He knows she and Skinner have gotten close with Fenris as well, what with their ridiculous elfy stretching sessions in the mornings and all. Fenris is possibly the least elven elf Krem has ever met, but there are some things you can never quite get away from. It's the same as their both being from Tevinter- neither of them ever really had a great time with living there, but it's their home all the same, and they're connected to it.

The Chief keeps vigil with them for a while longer, and then he leans down and brushes some hair away from Fenris's face and presses the back of his hand to his forehead.

"Fever's worse," he says, and straightens. "I'm gonna get Stitches. Keep watch."

Krem nods, not like he'd been planning on doing otherwise, and settles in. Dalish isn't very heavy, mercifully, and he's comfortable enough. No armour today, no weapons, nothing but himself and his hopes.

Stitches comes in a little while after Bull leaves and checks Fenris's temperature, then confirms Bull's diagnosis. "It's good you're here," he says to Dalish. "I think his fever's spiking. If it gets too much worse, I'll need you to cool him."

Dalish nods. Her staff is propped by the door, and she rises from Krem's lap and fetches it, then settles in cross-legged at the foot of the bed. Beneath the covers, Fenris tosses and turns, little murmurs of sound escaping his lips. This is the moment of truth, Krem thinks. If Fenris survives the hour, he'll be okay. But the worst is yet to come.

A half-hour ticks away. Fenris becomes more restless, until he's thrashing intermittently. Krem, on Stitches's orders, stands and leans over Fenris to restrain him, keep him from making his ribs worse as he fights the monsters in his dreams. In his mutterings, coherent words come forth:  _no_ and  _please_ and  _master_ . Once, confusingly,  _hawk_ . He alternates between fighting Krem's hands and curling up on the bed, begging, with his face scrunched like he should be crying. The fever has burned away all the water in him, and no tears come. It's horrible to watch, and he just grows hotter under Krem's hands until it feels like Fenris's skin will burn him.

Stitches doesn't call Dalish until Fenris's fighting begins to fade. He falls slack in Krem's grip, his breath diminished to shallow panting. He would almost think it was over, but Fenris is no cooler. Finally, Stitches waves her over, and she casts ice over all three of them. Fenris shudders and arches under the abrupt cold, and Stitches presses a hand to his forehead once more. He shakes his head, pulls away. Waits for long minutes.

"Come on, Fenris," Krem says. "Don't give up now."

As if he'd heard, Fenris takes another shallow, gasping breath. Then another, a little deeper. He shifts, tosses his head- and then relaxes. Stitches checks his forehead again, and looks up. He nods. "Fever's breaking," he says. "He's not out of the woods yet, but he's on his way."

Krem nearly collapses right onto Fenris, he's so relieved. He flops back into his chair and watches, feels Dalish's cooling spell disperse. A knock at the door announces the Chief; he looks around and grins. "Our boy's gonna pull through," he says, and Krem nods, suddenly exhausted.

"Looks like it, Chief," he says.

"Stumble off to bed," Bull tells the three of them. "I'll watch Fenris. If he wakes I'll send Grim."

"'Kay," Krem says, and drags himself out of the chair. The Chief takes his seat, settling in to watch Fenris, and the three of them leave the room, all headed for their own beds.

"A good day's work," Stitches says, just before they split off into their own rooms.

"Damn good," Krem agrees, and then goes into his room and faceplants into his mattress.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments and kudos always welcome.


	12. Open

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein things are actually looking up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have mentioned the lovely inkcharm before, my most regular and devoted reviewer, and now a very good friend. Today is her birthday! So I'm uploading this week's chapter a little early, as a gift to her. Much love from Canada, hon, and many blessings on your birthday!
> 
> In other news: I think this fic is wrapping up. Not that Fenris's story is done! There are, I think, two more chapters after this one (both of which are written), and then there'll be another fic in the series that'll chronicle in a series of vignettes the four-year timeskip between DA2 and Inquisition, and then there'll be some sort of fic (possible a long oneshot) that'll be Inquisition, and that should be the end. I don't have any intention of writing a full Inquisition fic, but god knows this fic has been out of my control basically from the very beginning, so I'm not going to tempt fate by making any declarations. This is, of course, subject to change, but I promise I'll let you know before I do anything drastic.
> 
> Also: I wrote an amount of smut in this 'verse. It's not going to end up in this fic, and more likely than not it won't end up in the next, either; I'll post it as separate fic when we get there. Again, subject to change. You'll just have to wait and see on that one. I can't give up my ~air of mystery~ entirely.

"This is familiar," is the first thing Fenris says when he wakes to find the Iron Bull sitting beside him. His whole body aches, and his voice is a rough croak.

The Bull laughs. "Sort of is," he says, good natured. "Feeling better?"

Fenris shrugs, then hisses when the movement makes his ribs ache. "Compared to a few hours ago, certainly. In general, no."

"That's to be expected." The Bull helps Fenris sit up and drink from a cup of lukewarm water that was sitting on a bedside table. "You're pretty snarky this morning."

"I feel," Fenris says, and trails off. There's nothing distinct about the way he feels. Just more himself, maybe, but even that isn't quite the right way of putting it. "Different," he finishes finally, and the Bull nods.

"Makes sense," he says. "Heart's Ease fucks you up."

"That is the potion the magister fed me?" Fenris asks, and the Bull nods.

"It's basically a mind control drug," he explains. "Real insidious, real nasty. The withdrawal is pretty slow; there're a lot of psychological symptoms before it really hits physically. It comes from you, though."

"What?"

"It feeds off the hidden parts of you, drags them to the surface. It'll make anyone submissive, sure, but I'm guessing that you were pretty submissive already." The Iron Bull sees Fenris's expression and holds up his hands in a placating gesture. "There's nothing wrong with that! You can be submissive without being a slave, or anything like that. You can be free and independent and still like to be ordered around sometimes. It's okay."

Fenris snorts, but he doesn't argue. He was free, he reminds himself, when he was with Hawke. He served her because he loved her, and it hurts less now to remember that.

"These are parts of you, Fenris," the Bull says. "Your desire to serve, to be good. There's nothing wrong with that."

"I am not sure I can believe you," Fenris tells him bluntly. "That part of me- someone once told me that it was learned behaviour, and he was not wrong. I was taught to be the way I am; I had it beaten into me. Just because I cannot be rid of it does not mean it is something inborn."

"No," the Bull agrees. "What's inborn is your wanting to be free. Still. You'll never be happy if you're always at war with yourself."

"Maybe so," Fenris sighs, and relaxes, staring up at the ceiling. "I've been fighting for a long time."

"I could tell. Fight with us for a while. You'll like it better."

"Maybe so," Fenris says again. "What of the- the panic? The fear? Did that come from the poison as well?"

"It makes everything worse," the Bull says. "None of it came from nowhere, but you'd never have lost it like that if not for the withdrawal. Still, I think there's gotta be a part of you that thinks we're gonna leave you behind the second you prove you're not perfect, and that just ain't gonna happen. You're a Charger now; unless you decide to leave all by yourself, you're stuck with us."

Fenris smiles faintly. "Thank you, Bull."

"You're welcome."

A content quiet falls between them. Fenris stares at the off-white ceiling, the Bull watches Fenris, both of them considering and unbothered. Now that Fenris has a moment to truly take stock of himself, it's incredible how much better he feels. Yes, his ribs still ache, and he has a pounding headache that is all that remains of the fever, but the wary, unsettled feeling that has possessed him is gone. He hadn't even realized that he had been feeling that way. Contentedness is remarkable after so long without it, and slowly he is beginning to forget once more what it feels like to hate himself so deeply as he had when he'd been under the magister's sway. He is his own man once again, breathing free air, and though he is without Hawke, maybe that is for the best. He loved her- still loves her. But in hindsight, maybe she hadn't been so good for him as he had once thought. He doesn't need her any more. It's a liberating feeling.

Then the Iron Bull breaks the silence. “You know the Champion of Kirkwall, don't you.”

It's not a question. “Yes,” Fenris says, after hesitating a moment. “When did I give myself away?”

“When I told you about Kirkwall, really, but I had my suspicions before that. The Qun has been aware of the situation there, and we're interested. I almost got assigned there a few years back, but it was decided after the loss of the Arishok that more likely we'd only lose an operative,” the Bull says. “There were reports on Hawke and her associates, though, including a lyrium-marked elf. After you showed your abilities I was pretty sure, but I wasn't going to make any assumptions.”

Fenris turns his head to regard the Iron Bull. “You are Ben-Hassrath,” he says quietly. The Bull nods, and Fenris lets out a harsh breath. “I've seen your kind work before. Masters of manipulation and information gathering. Somehow, I find myself unsurprised.”

“I'm more subtle than I come across,” the Bull says. “You're more familiar with the Qunari than I'd thought.”

“I spent some time on Seheron,” Fenris says. “In all honesty, I thought at first that you were Tal-Vashoth. Nothing like those who haunt the Wounded Coast, certainly, but there are some who live less renegade lives.”

“No,” Bull says. “I'm Qunari to the core.”

“I see.”

“I've no interest in converting you or any of the Chargers, if that's what you're worried about,” the Bull says, and Fenris shakes his head.

“No, you would have tried by now. I would not have been difficult to convert even two days ago, but you have lost your window. You know that, I'm sure,” he says. “As to the rest- do they know?”

“They do,” the Bull says. “I put off telling you until I was sure about you, but I'm sure now.”

“That I'm no magister's spy? Or a spy for Hawke?” It's the first time he's said her name since the magister forced it from him, all those weeks ago. He's surprised when it does not claw at his throat.

“I never really thought that,” the Bull says. “Your reactions, your choices- I've never doubted they were honest. Besides, a spy would have thrown himself fully on our mercy, played for sympathy, shown us the evidence of rape and torture I know for a fact was there and used that to gain trust.” He pauses, but when Fenris doesn't react negatively, he continues, “You'd have played it like you were broken, and instead you just kept to yourself, helped out, and carried on like nothing was wrong.”

“You seem very sure I was struggling,” Fenris says. He doesn't quite know what to think. He supposes he should have known that they knew what he had gone through. They were too careful with him, really.

"I had Stitches sedate you and check you out that first night. Had to be sure you weren't hiding anything life-threatening."

Fenris scowls. "You had no right."

"No," Bull agrees, throwing Fenris off. He had though the Qunari would argue; he did have  _ some _ right, really. "But you were very close to broken when we found you. You understand why I did it."

"I do," Fenris says grudgingly. "I do not much like it."

"Of course not. It was an invasion of your privacy, and what we found- that should have been your choice to tell us about. Not that I wasn't pretty sure already," Bull says. "You're attractive, and Heart's Ease is used as a rape drug in small doses. I wasn't surprised. Still, you seemed pretty un-traumatized, relatively speaking, so I left you alone about it."

"It was not the first time." Fenris has to be matter-of-fact about this, or he would not be able to speak of it at all. "In my youth I was owned by a magister named Danarius. He was... immeasurably cruel, at times. I learned not to let it hurt me then. The blue-eyed magister was not nearly so bad, really; he only had me twice before you killed him."

The Bull looks at Fenris with startlingly soft eyes. "Rape and torture aren't things anyone should be used to," he says. "Particularly not the former. But if thinking of it that way gets you through the day, you go ahead."

Fenris rolls his eyes. "I appreciate the permission."

The Bull snorts. "You've got a mouth on you, under all that subservience."

"I try."

"You succeed," the Bull says. Then he sobers, and says, "You've got a choice to make, Fenris. If you want, you can stay with us. You're a Charger now, good and proper, and we'll kit you out and find you a sword that suits you, and you can stay with us. You'll get bed and board, and a small personal wage as a part of the crew. I know Krem and Skinner in particular would be glad to have you on, and I like you plenty myself."

He pauses then, and Fenris's mouth goes dry.

"Or," the Bull says, "we'll take you wherever you want to go, and leave you there. I'll help you find the Champion, if you want, or we can help you find work in Orlais, or I can leverage my contacts and have you formally freed, and you can go raise a slave rebellion in Tevinter. Or something. Whatever you want, Fenris: it's up to you."

Fenris swallows hard. If he has ever been free before this moment, he cannot remember it. This, he realizes, this is what freedom is. Choice. Opportunity. The knowledge that he can follow his heart, wherever it leads. The Iron Bull has spread his palms, and on them rests the world, waiting only for Fenris to reach out and take it. And suddenly he finds that he doesn't want it. "I'm a Charger now," Fenris says. "You said that, just now. That's what I want."

Bull smiles and sits back. "If you're sure."

Fenris meets his eyes. "I've never been so sure of anything in my life." And that is the Maker's honest truth. It's liberating.

 

Time passes more easily after that, pouring through Fenris's hands more like cool water and less like rough sand. He recovers, properly this time. As if some invisible wall has been torn down, Fenris finds his room constantly invaded by the other Chargers: usually Krem, often Dalish or Skinner, even Grim and Rocky. Stitches hovers like the denmother he is, and Fenris submits with many long-suffering sighs to his ministrations and admonitions. He stays in bed, mostly, because he's still weak from the fever and sore as anything. The others keep him company, keep him entertained. The first time he really joins in with their joking, there's not even a moment of startled or uncomfortable silence as they adjust; they take his presence in their lives and their conversations as given.

Fenris finds it surprisingly easy to bond with Krem over their shared homeland, given that neither of them has any real affection for it. There are things they both miss: the heat, the language, some aspects of the culture. Fenris tells Krem about the constant itching, tingling, aching of his lyrium when he still lived in Tevinter, where magic was everywhere at every moment. Krem tells Fenris about being in the army, tells him off-colour jokes, and laughs with him over improbable Tevinter warrior's fables that Fenris hasn't heard in a lifetime. The both remember the exhibitions of martial skill. Fenris had taken part in them, a slave to be displayed; Krem had been a spectator, more often as a child than an adult, admiring the skill of the fighters. It's bittersweet for both of them. The arid heat of their ancestry forms a foundation for a friendship that quickly grows strong, and Fenris finds himself happy, truly happy, for the first time in a long time.

His relationships with the other Chargers are both more and less easy, all in different ways. Fenris finds himself spending considerable time with Dalish and Skinner, especially as he heals more and begins to recondition. Once, early in the morning as they sit together in the dust outside the inn, stretching, he asks, “Why do you do this with me?”

Dalish looks at Skinner, bent backwards nearly in half, and then at Fenris's perfect split, and says, “We couldn't do it with any of those bloody inflexible shems. They'd snap in half.”

Fenris snorts a laugh, and then says, “That's not quite what I meant.”

“Say what you mean, then,” Skinner grunts, and kicks over into a handstand. She bends, balancing carefully, until she can tilt her head to look at him.

“I only meant- why include me? I'm less elven even than you, Skinner, except in my physiology.”

The women share a look. “It's not about being elven,” Dalish says, and then pauses. “Well, sort of it is. There's some things elves are going to know that shemlen will never know in the same way, not even ones like Krem or Grim. We've got to stick together. But also it's because we like you, Fenris. Honest.”

Dalish reminds Fenris of Merrill sometimes, in her honesty and her earnestness. There's something that the Dalish breed into themselves among their clans, something forthright that Fenris honestly appreciates. He appreciated it about Merrill, too, when he wasn't too busy being wary of her. She was naive; Dalish is worldly. “Thank you,” he tells her sincerely. “I've never felt any connection to- to my people. Not a connection that wasn't about suffering.”

Skinner drops out of her handstand and flops into a comfortable sitting position, and then waits until Fenris has finished shifting out of his split to say, “It's the same for me. The alienages are shit, but I'm no mage- the Dalish wouldn't've taken me.”

“They would have, really,” Dalish says. “But it's hard for city elves to join the Dalish. Harder than some think. We don't live easy lives.”

Fenris looks between the two women, first at Dalish, sent from her clan for being just one too many, and Skinner, chased from the city for stopping an atrocity. “None of us do,” he says, quietly.

Skinner laughs. “Amen to that,” she says, and goes back to stretching.

And that is Fenris's life among the Chargers. Quiet evenings with Grim when he needs them, drinking with Rocky and Krem when he is in the mood for it, stretching with Dalish and Skinner in the mornings, being checked over by Stitches and trading stories with him. Fenris's relationship with the Chief, with the Iron Bull, is a little harder to quantify: the Qunari is an enigma, even after the revelation of his status. Somehow, Fenris thinks the Bull feels the same about him, which makes it okay. They get along well, with enough in common for each to know how not to poke at the other's scars, but Fenris finds him hard to joke with as Krem or Dalish do.

Some days are worse than others. Sometimes the pain is bad, sometimes he has nightmares, sometimes he is caught again and again by memory, and spends the day wandering in a daze, unsure of where he stands or who he is. Sometimes he finds himself struggling under the weight of panic, feeling like a burden on those he has come to care about. Even the cravings sometimes come, and Fenris knows it is because his addiction was in his mind, not in his body. Submission was always easier. But he fights, fights on the bad days and the good ones, even, to be better than what he was and to be better than how he is. He will never be a slave again; he will never let anyone say the words to him, not and escape unharmed.

“You're lighter,” the Bull says to him one day, as they cool down after a spar. Fenris is almost back in fighting shape, his ribs fully healed and his muscle tone nearly restored. They'll be leaving this city soon, moving on to find the next job. It's been several months since Fenris joined the Chargers, and at least six weeks since his battle with the fever. “Not physically.”

Fenris considers himself, rolls his shoulders and bounces on his toes. His feet are bare in the dust, and the sword he had been wielding had seemed such a small weight. The Bull is right. He  _ is  _ lighter. “No small thanks to you,” Fenris says. “I may well have been dead by now if you had not found me.”

“You were too good a slave,” the Bull says quietly. “Too broken. No, you'd've lived, your breath would have kept coming. But what makes you our Fenris would be gone.”

Fenris draws a breath at the possessive, and the realizes, like a fire being sparked to flame, that he doesn't mind it. He is theirs. He's a Charger, one of them, part of them; that makes them his, too. “Yes,” he says, and comes forward to stretch out a hand. The Bull responds immediately, clasping his huge hand around Fenris's slim forearm and grasping. Fenris returns his grip. “Thank you.”

“Don't thank me,” the Bull says. “You did this yourself, for yourself. There's no other way it could've been done.”

Fenris only nods, and then goes to find Krem. He wants a drink, and to find out if the other man knows any of the old victory songs the field-slaves would sing, the ones he could always hear them singing when he was when he was in the training yards at Danarius's estate. He has a favourite that he learned from them. He wants to share it with someone.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments and kudos welcome, as always.


	13. Meet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A number of decisions are made.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the second last chapter! I don't really have any notes about it, other than: it feels very long to me, but it might not really be- maybe it's just my perception. In any case, enjoy.
> 
> Woops, ETA: I posted a second piece in this series- anyone interested in following Bow and Bend after it's over should subscribe to said series. The piece I posted is a deleted scene from somewhere in the vicinity of Chapters 12 and 13. Go check it out!

Marian gets a letter from Varric every two weeks or so with the latest updates from his network of contacts. The information is always a little outdated, but it's better than nothing. She and Anders are holed up in a tavern in a tiny Ferelden backwater, two weeks' travel from where they'd parted from Merrill, and the latest letter is in her hands.

 _Hawke_ , it says.

> _The world's gone mad. But, well, you knew that already. You would have gathered in from the last three letters I sent you. Every Circle in the Free Marches has been annulled, or they tried to annul them: every single one has fought back. The rebellion has started to spread to Orlais; a few smaller Circles have rebelled, but the big cities are still under control. For the moment, anyway. Ferelden's not so bad, as I guess you can see. I'd put that on King Alistair and the Warden-Commander. Things in Ferelden haven't been so bad for mages in the last few years, so there's less insanity._
> 
> _Kirkwall's even more of a clusterfuck than usual. Aveline and the Acting Knight-Commander are doing okay holding down the fort, but they're still pulling bodies out of the wreckage of the Chantry. Seems like every day there's another family who's lost a child, or a child who's lost a parent. Elthina's body is still missing, but they sometimes find bits and pieces of bodies, which makes me think maybe we have found it, and we just don't know it's her. She would have been near the centre of the blast._
> 
> _(I'd tell you to read that section out to Anders, because he should know what he's done, but I know you won't do it. You're too easy on him.)_
> 
> _Anyway. Isabela's gone from port again. She's gone off on a supply run for me, and to collect news. I'm hoping she'll make it all the way north to Tevinter, but she always complains that she hates sailing past Rivain, so maybe she won't. Still, I need a sense of the temperature there. They've got to be interested in the mage rebellions, and they've never thought much of the Southern Circles. Makes me nervous, Hawke. If the Tevinters decided to march in here, fireballs blazing, we wouldn't have much of a way to resist them. The Templars are a mess, what with a quarter of them being dead, and half of all the rest gone missing or gone rogue. Like I mentioned, Cullen's holding things together here in Kirkwall, but he looks more tired every time I see him. The non-Chantry military aren't doing much better. They're not equipped to deal with mages who've lost control, not really, and they're_ _ definitely  _ _not equipped to deal with mages who haven't lost control, but are just plain hostile._
> 
> _There's another thing. Apparently the Chargers have been hired by a businessman in Jader, and they're on their way south out of Orlais. They'll probably be in the country by the time you get this; I don't know how long they'll stay, but you could head for the coast and try to catch them. Rumour has it they've picked up a new member, full time: an elf with white hair and strange markings. Sound like anyone we know? It's up to you, Hawke. If you do find him, let me know how he's doing. I miss the broody ass._
> 
> _That's about all the news. Isabela sends her love. Well, she sent a bit more than that, but I've censored her for your sake. I checked in on Orana for you, as you asked, and she's getting alone fine. Spoiling your dog straight to the Void, I'm pretty sure, but there's no harm in that. He's looking after her in return, so there's nothing to worry about. And I got a letter from Merrill a few days ago- she's headed back to Kirkwall. If you ever catch that elf and make it back here, it'll almost be like old times. Skyline's changed, is all._
> 
> _Yours,_
> 
> _Varric_

He always signed his letters with a flourish. A showman right to his bones, and Marian smiles at the letter, then folds it away. She does enjoy Varric's letters, though she'd had to stop reading them aloud to Anders. Varric can't seem to resist taking at least one blatant and one subtle dig at Anders in his letters, and it's difficult for Marian to see her friend suffering. She can understand why Varric did it, she supposes. Kirkwall is his city, his home, and Anders had... broken it. He'd broken the world.

Marian sighs, her enjoyment fading. She sinks back into the armchair next to the fire in the room they'd rented, staring at the flames. Anders is sleeping on the bed behind her, his soft, wheezing breaths forming a quiet undertone to the crackling of the flames and the rattling of the window. A storm had blown in that morning, which was why they had entered civilization at all. Usually they stayed well out of the way, unless it was a place Marian had told Varric they'd be stopping, so she could receive his letters. She'd have to write him a reply, she reminds herself, and makes a mental note of it.

For now, she is trapped in a quiet room, a man the innkeeper thinks is her husband alone in the bed behind her, and she is missing Fenris desperately. She's missing _everyone_ desperately. Anders is good company, yes, but he's only a single man, and not the man she had loved for nigh on ten years. She misses the closeness she'd had with Fenris, the intimacy, and, yes, the sex. She sighs again, and internally bemoans, not for the first time, that Anders is in love with her. He's very handsome, really, but she can't proposition him without eventually needing to break his heart, and he's too good a friend for her to do that to. Her realization of his feelings had come slowly, over the time they'd been travelling together, but as they had no choice but to spend time with each other and had become closer, the knowledge had come over her inexorably. Anders loves her. And she cannot love him, not yet- probably not ever. Their relationship is in a sort of semi-uncomfortable limbo where she knows what he feels and cannot act on it one way or the other, and she thinks he knows she knows, and has said nothing only because he, in turn, knows she cannot act.

“Fuck,” Marian says, and buries her face in her hands. Her life has become a mess. As much of a mess as the rest of Thedas, if Varric is to be believed. And now she has to decide if she's going to hunt down her lover, or if she's willing to keep waiting, maybe forever, for him to come home.

 

It takes them two weeks to reach Jader. The weather is miserable the entire time, which about reflects Anders's mood. Hawke at least hasn't lied to him about the purpose of this journey: they're going to try to meet Fenris. She's still in love with him. It seems almost ridiculous to Anders, but he supposes he can't really throw stones. So they're trekking halfway across Ferelden to find the broody elf.

In truth, Anders doesn't begrudge Hawke the journey. He'd do the same for her, and he doesn't really _hate_ Fenris. Well. He hates Fenris, but he's no proponent of slavery, and it will be reassuring, at least, to see the other man well. He can admit to himself that he's bitter as anything about Fenris's position as Hawke's lover, bitter and jealous, but Anders can recognize that while he doesn't think Fenris was a good choice, he was still Hawke's _choice_ . He sighs and rubs a hand over the back of his neck, trying once more, with as much futility as ever, to close his heart to Hawke. He's never succeeded before, but he's lived his life so far by a principle of _try, try again_.

Jader's outskirts are muddy, and they smell like dog, which is par for the course in Ferelden. Hawke looks tired, Anders thinks, glancing at her. When they find an inn, he'll send her upstairs to sleep while he pays the innkeeper and digs for information. She might even listen to him, if he insists as a healer.

The inn they find isn't terrible, and it isn't terribly expensive. Hawke fights Anders for a moment or two when he tells her she should get some rest; that he can take care of it, but there are dark shadows under her eyes and she's lost weight. “Go,” he tells her. “Healer's orders.”

“Anders,” she sighs. But she goes, lead to their room by the small inn's sole chambermaid, and that's good enough for him.

He pays the innkeeper for three nights, and orders a meal and a bath to be sent to their room in a few hours. Then he asks, “Have you heard of a company called the Chargers?”

The innkeeper blinks at him. “You got a job for them, laddie? I wouldn't have thought you had the coin.”

Anders shrugs, as nonchalant as he can be. He's dressed shabbily, he knows, his distinctive feathered cloak discarded long ago, leaving only a dark shirt and trousers. He cannot afford to mark himself a mage by wearing robes, and he has a dagger in his belt to further disperse suspicion. Hawke had suggested cutting his hair as well, but he'd refused. Still, he's wearing it in a lower ponytail than usual. He knows he doesn't look like much to the innkeeper, and that's the way he wants it. “Only if I can find them,” he says.

The innkeeper considers him. “They're staying at the inn two streets over, the one above the Long Legged Lady. 'S a tavern. Rumour has it they'll be gone by tonight, though- their job's done.”

“Thank you,” Anders murmurs, and then innkeeper takes the silver Anders presses into his palm and shuffles away. What to do now, Anders thinks. Hawke is sleeping. If he lets her, she'll sleep until the Chargers are gone. They could catch them on the road, maybe, but. But.

Without really deciding to, Anders slips out of the tavern and heads off down the street. The sign for the Long Legged Lady is in sight before he can change his mind, an image of a woman in a hiked-up red dress, her legs bared. Not the most reputable of establishments, Anders thinks, and he steps inside. It's busy, bustling, with just the slightest edge of rowdiness. And there, in the back corner, is the hulking figure of a kossith male. The fabled Iron Bull, the leader of Bull's Charger's, surely.

Anders doesn't know what to do. If he approaches them, he'll be instantly recognized, and he has no idea what will happen. More than likely Fenris will react violently, and without a staff Anders is in considerable danger. And that doesn't even take into account the potential reaction of the Qunari and his mercenaries. Even if Anders survives, he may well be run out of town, and Hawke with him if they find out he's got a companion. He knows he's been blamed for the mess in Kirkwall-

A hand comes down on his shoulder.

“Don't open your mouth, mage,” comes a familiar, snarling voice. “Or I'll put a gag in it, and you won't enjoy that.”

“Easy, Fenris,” says another voice, a woman's voice pitched low, behind Anders's other shoulder. “We do still need to find out what he wants.”

Anders blinks. He realizes abruptly that the Qunari is watching him- them, Anders and Fenris and the woman- over the heads of the crowd. He swallows.

“This way,” Fenris says, and shoves Anders forward, pushing him through the crowd toward the Qunari. People turn to look, then glance away from whatever ugly expression must be on Fenris's face. Finally, they make it through, coming to stand before a semi-circle of rough-looking people, all armed and well-armoured. Two female elves, one with Dalish markings; a dwarf with a mustache; two human men, one blond and pale, the other dark-skinned and short-haired; and the Qunari, who is sitting back with his legs splayed casually, his huge, scarred hands on his knees. He has an eyepatch, and his horns are broader than any Anders has ever seen.

“You were supposed to be fetching drinks,” the Qunari says mildly. “What've you brought us, boys?”

 _Boys?_ Anders thinks. He'd thought the other person was a woman. But when they step around him, their face is- well, not totally masculine, but not feminine, either. “Fenris caught some sort of rat,” the person says. Same voice, still feminine, but Anders maybe understands why that voice is pitched low. He's not met many people who change their gender that way- he blinks forcefully, shaking away the thoughts, because now is _really_ not the time for academic curiosity about some stranger's life choices.

“He is-” Fenris stops. “There are listening ears.”

“Upstairs, then,” the Qunari says, and hefts his bulk from the bench he was seated on. The other Chargers fall in around them, the Qunari leading the group, Anders behind him, Fenris with one hand still on his shoulder. It's a subtle threat, but a present one. Anders knows Fenris could easily phase his hand sideways into Anders's throat and tear out a chunk of his spine, among other grisly executions, any of which could be completed in the space of a breath. He doesn't dare go for his dagger.

They file upstairs into the inn, then into a suite of rooms that are fairly well-appointed. Anders is forced down into a chair, and someone binds his hands behind him, then relieves him of his dagger. When they step away, he sees it was one of the elves, the female with no marks on her face. She grins at him, then twirls the dagger deftly. “Nice blade,” she says. “Not a mage's weapon.”

Anders says nothing.

“So,” the Qunari cuts in. “What've you got for me, Fenris?”

“This is Anders,” Fenris says. “Whose name you surely know.”

“I do,” the Qunari says, his eyes gleaming with a speculative light. “What d'you figure?”

“I doubt he's here to harm me or any of us,” Fenris says. “I'm not sure he would even have expected to meet us. If he did know we were here, I can't imagine why he'd seek us out- he must have known that I'd recognize him.”

The Qunari turns that bright, piercing gaze on Anders. He's still standing, and it puts him very, very high above Anders. “Tell us, mage. What're you doing here? Because I think you knew we were here.”

There's no real advantage in keeping silent, Anders knows, so he speaks. “I did come looking for you,” he says. “I- don't know why. I know it wasn't wise.”

“Are you alone?”

Anders hesitates. That's enough.

“The Champion, do you think?” the Qunari asks Fenris.

Fenris steps around Anders, finally affording him his first glimpse of the elf. Fenris hasn't changed much, but there's still something different about him. His hair is longer, tied back out of his face in a small queue, and his equipment is different. Chainmail beneath a breastplate much sleeker than the one he'd had all through their acquaintance in Kirkwall; leather bracers, pauldrons, and gloves, but no gauntlets. He looks fit, with fewer shadows around his eyes, and a lighter frown on his lips. With no hair hanging in his face, his eyes seem lighter, brighter. It's an almost startling change, once Anders realizes the whole of it. And while he has been scrutinizing Fenris, Fenris has been scrutinizing him.

“Almost certainly,” Fenris says, finally. “None of our other... friends would have gone with him, but Hawke is kindhearted enough not to forsake him, though he is forsaken already. I doubt he would have sought another companion, had she left him to wander.”

“Is that true?”

It takes a moment for Anders to realize the question was directed toward him. “Yes,” he admits. “I'm travelling with Hawke.”

“Where is she?” the Qunari probes. It's a surprise that it isn't Fenris who asks, but his expression is smooth, and he's stepped back to stand behind the Qunari and to his left.

“We're staying at an inn a few streets over. She's sleeping, or she should be. I came here alone.”

“Why?”

Anders shrugs, the movement inhibited by his bonds. “I don't know,” he says again. “I wanted to see, I suppose. Whether it was true.”

“Whether what was true?”

“That Fenris is with you,” Anders says. “Varric has been tracking rumours of him since he was taken.”

Fenris looks a bit taken aback. “I was not aware,” he murmurs, and the auburn-haired person places a hand on his shoulder.

“I told you they'd have been looking for you,” he (most likely, Anders decides) says.

“Yes,” Fenris replies, then refocuses on Anders. “It was Hawke who decided to come here, then?”

Anders nods. “If I'd had my choice, we'd not have come,” he says. “I've no love for you, Fenris, as you know. But I'll admit that it's good to see you well, for all that we've never gotten along.”

“I wish I could say the same,” Fenris says, “but I would rather you were dead. I would rather you had died years ago, so that you could not have done what you did.”

“I'm sure everything you believe about me seems justified,” Anders says, and then snorts. “Justified. Funny. Pun not intended.”

Fenris doesn't roll his eyes, react to the joke in any way like he might have when they were still- well, not friends, but not standing on opposite sides of an interrogation. “I always knew what you are,” he says, instead. “Or, if not what you were, then what you would become. No mage is capable of controlling a demon once the contract is made.”

“Merrill's alive and well,” Anders says. “If you were wondering. Last Hawke and I heard from Varric, she's back in Kirkwall.”

“I don't care about Merrill,” Fenris says. “Do you wish to die, Anders? Is that why you came here, without Hawke's presence to shield you?”

“If you cared enough about her enough that her being here would stop you from killing me, you'd have come back to her a long time ago,” Anders says fiercely. “She deserved better than you.”

“I was _kidnapped_ , Anders,” Fenris spits, advancing on Anders. Light shimmers in the lyrium markings on his throat and the bared parts of his arms. “It was not my fault; that I did not return was my choice, that much I admit, but for you at least it was better. I would have advocated for your death if I had been there, and Hawke might well have loved me enough to listen. Don't forget that.”

“Easy,” the Qunari says. He places a hand on the back on Fenris's neck, and the elf subsides. Anders blinks. Even Hawke hadn't had that much power, and his estimation of the relationship between Fenris and the Iron Bull changes. “We've got questions for him yet, before I decide what we'll do with him.”

“Hawke won't stay asleep forever,” Anders says quietly. “You've got maybe two hours before she comes looking.”

“That's plenty of time,” the Qunari says. Anders doesn't much like the look in his eye. “You've been involved in some bad business, mage. And it seems like there's something Fenris hasn't told me about you.”

Anders registers that, then blurts, “You haven't told him about Justice?” The next instant, he curses himself. It's been too long since he was last taken by Templars; once he had been good at resisting interrogation.

“Justice?” the Qunari asks.

“He's possessed,” Fenris says. “Having seen abominations and demons aplenty in my time, I cannot say for sure that he is _demon_ possessed, but I've seen the power of the spirit of Justice that lives beneath his skin. He has used it to help us, but I am near-certain that it was the spirit's influence that lead to the destruction of the Chantry. In the time I knew Anders, he grew increasingly unstable.”

“The spirit was gaining control?”

“No,” Anders says. His voice is too loud, nearly a shout; he quiets himself. “No, though Justice has taken control of our body from me in the past, that was when we were- separate. It's because we were beginning to merge.”

Fenris raises an eyebrow, but no one says anything, so Anders continues. “We've almost completely absorbed each other by now. His thoughts are mine. I'm not- not the Anders I was, but I remember that man. How to be him. But I can be Justice when I need, too.” In demonstration, he touches the well of power deep in his soul, and sees the blue blaze through the skin of his hands. Then he lets it go. “At the time of the Chantry explosion, we were still- separate. In some capacity. It made us both insane, to be so close to something whole, and yet still parted. All the worst parts of the both of us came to the surface, because the best was buried in the roil.”

Anders lets his gaze harden, knows that in the mindset he is in, his eyes will have gone blue. Not glowing, not unnatural, just blue. “I don't regret what I did, if that's one of the questions you were going to ask,” he says. “I'm sorry for the innocent lives lost, but I'll forever hold to the belief that they were necessary losses. Thedas was going to tear itself apart if there was no action, and though the mage rebellion is messy, it's at least _progress_. You can't look at what the Templars have done, both before the rebellion and after, as the Circles have dissolved, and say that I'm entirely in the wrong.”

“My first instinct,” says the Qunari, when it becomes clear that Anders is done, “is to kill you. Maybe that would be smart. You've created a real shitstorm, and I'm not at all fond of demons, or spirits, or whatever the fuck it is you've got inside you. The Qun's got rules about mages, as I'm sure you know. Still, you're not wrong that Thedas was going to be a mess one way or another. Plus, I'm not really feeling any urge to fuck with the Champion of Kirkwall, disgraced or no. But I don't think it should be totally up to me.” He turns, then, to look at Fenris. “You know him best, Fenris, and I trust your judgement. What do you think?”

Fenris takes a deep breath. The thoughts whirling behind his eyes are nearly visible on his face, but still Anders cannot guess what the elf is thinking. It's been so long since they've seen each other, and it's clear that this Fenris is a different man than the one Anders knew in Kirkwall. “It is also my first instinct to kill him,” he says, after a long minute. “But I don't think, in this case, that my first instinct is the best. Anders and I have never gotten along, and but for the tentative truce that was wrought between us by our mutual acquaintance with and care for Hawke, I would likely have killed him years ago. I don't like him. I don't like what he is. But if I had been offered the chance to free every slave in Tevinter, I would have taken it, no matter how much collateral damage there would have been.”

Anders draws a sharp breath. He's not sure he's ever heard Fenris compare the plight of the Circle mages to slavery before- maybe rightly so. It's not the same, for all that there are similarities. It gives him hope that Fenris would draw such a parallel now.

“We should let him go,” Fenris says. “He'll not cause any trouble for us, because for all his apparent martyrdom, Anders has always been a survivor. He knows I'll kill him if he tries to attack us.”

“True that,” Anders snorts, and then shuts his mouth when Fenris shoots him a quelling look. There's a kind of power in Fenris's gaze now; something he never had before, though he was certainly not without presence.

“And the Champion?” the Qunari asks. “I'm sure you've got an opinion on her, Fenris.”

“Certainly,” Fenris says blandly. Then he clears his throat, and casts his eyes to the ground. He turns away from Anders, deferring to the Qunari with every shift, every line of his body. It's something Anders has seen him do toward Hawke once or twice. “She is- she was everything to me. I would not be the man I am today without her, that much is certain. Still, I cannot say what it would do to me to see her again. I'm not sure I'm ready.”

The Qunari reaches forward and places his hand on the back of Fenris's neck, squeezes gently, then lets go. “Pack up,” he says. “I want to be gone before the Champion knows to look for us.” He turns steely eyes on Anders. “Leave the mage to me.”

The people in the room nod, Fenris included, and file out, leaving Anders alone with the Qunari.

“Are you going to kill me?” Anders asks, and the Qunari grunts.

“I said it before- it's tempting. But I trust Fenris's word. I'll let you go.”

“Just like that?”

The Qunari shakes his head. “Head off the Champion. It's not time yet for her and Fenris to have their reunion, I think, so you're going to buy us time to get out of town and then keep her from coming after us. Tell her whatever you want, just keep her away.”

Anders swallows. “She won't be pleased.”

“Do I look like I care?” The question is possibly the most rhetorical Anders has ever heard, and given his acquaintance with Varric, that's saying something. Anders answers anyway, with a shake of his head, and then tenses when the Qunari comes forward with the dagger that was taken from him earlier in his hand. “I just said I'm not planning on killing you. Or dismembering, maiming, or otherwise injuring, just for thoroughness's sake,” the Qunari says. He comes around to Anders's back and cuts his bonds, then hands him the dagger. “Get out of my sight before I change my mind.”

Anders nods, and gets up to leave. He pauses at the door. “You've done a good thing for Fenris,” he says, his voice low. “You didn't know him as Hawke and I did, but if you had, you'd know- you've done a good thing. He was broken in a way even Marian couldn't fix, and you've fixed him.”

“He was never broken,” the Qunari says. “If you thought so, more fool you. If _she_ thought so, shame on her.”

“Look after him,” Anders says, and does not add _for her sake_. He doesn't need to, he thinks, and slips away.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments and kudos are welcome, as always.


	14. Start

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I agonized over this chapter. Put me out of my misery, please.

“Is he gone?” Fenris demands, the second the Bull walks into the room he has been sharing with Krem. “You sent him back?”

“Yeah,” the Bull says. “He's gone. I promise I didn't maim him.”

“I don't care about that,” Fenris says. “He's- I won't call him a monster, because for all his flaws, Anders has never been a monster. Not like those I have known. But he is dangerous.”

“I sent him running back to Hawke,” the Bull says. “I think he'll go. He seemed glad for you.”

Fenris scoffs, and throws the shirt in his hand into his pack. He has only a few more belongings to gather, and then they'll be ready to go. He himself is more than ready to be gone. It itches beneath his skin to know that Hawke is only minutes from him, a short walk, a door. He has been so far from her for so long. Still, the thought of seeing her is a fearful one. He's not ready, might break all over again if he was faced with her. With the shade of what was once his whole heart, now dusty and discarded. He cannot say, even after many long night watches worth of thought, whether he loves Hawke any longer. Once she was everything, and there was no part of him that was not devoted to her in every way. Now he is loyal to the Iron Bull, to the Chargers, to his friends among them. He has changed, and he doesn't know what it would do to him to be faced with his past. The past has come for him before, time and again, and each time it has ended in blood.

“He's in love with her,” the Iron Bull says, and Fenris sighs.

“I know,” he says. “He always has been. Why she chose me, when she had more in common with him, and he was the more eager, the more desperate for her love, I do not know. Still, if she never went to his side then, I doubt she will do so now.”

“You think she's still loyal to you?”

Fenris shrugs. “I cannot say. Some part of me is still loyal to her, but I loved her so totally that it will never entirely go away.” As he says it, he knows it's true, and the look in the Bull's eye makes Fenris think he's right. He'll always love Hawke, but that does not mean that he could ever be with her again. “She was never attached in the same way, I think. She owned my heart, my soul; I held her heart, certainly, but she could have taken it back. She didn't want to, but she could have. I would have let her.”

“Sometimes that's how it is,” the Bull says, “though you might be underestimating her. She's a woman known for her dedication; she wouldn't have turned her back on you. She hasn't, in all this time.”

“No,” Fenris says. He examines his back, then glances around the room. He has everything, he thinks, and anything not in his pack will have ended up in Krem's. “She was devoted. She still is. She had all the power in our relationship, though, and in that way she could never have belonged to me in the way I belonged to her. I was no slave to her- but she told me once that she saw me that way, and she hated it. She hated that I served her, born of love as it was.” He looks up, meeting the Iron Bull's steady gaze. “Our relationship would have ended in tragedy. Maybe it did. What we had is gone.”

“I know,” the Bull says. “I was just wondering if you did.”

Fenris quirks a wry smile, and that is enough. This conversation is one they've had many times. Fenris stews in his own thoughts, but gets trapped in circles of thinking and overthinking and thinking again, and never can find the conclusion of it all. Somehow, the Bull pulls the heart of things from him. It's unnerving, sometimes, but it works. “Thank you,” Fenris says.

“Don't mention it.” Then the Bull goes, and leaves Fenris with Krem.

“You and the Chief have the most interesting conversations,” Krem says. “You never say any of that shit to me.”

Fenris gives his friend a fond look. “You are not Ben-Hassrath,” he says. “And our relationship is different.”

“I wish you'd tell me things,” Krem says. “Without my having to overhear you and the Boss. I get that it's different with us, but we're friends, aren't we? You trust me?”

“I wouldn't say it even in front of you if I didn't trust you absolutely,” Fenris says. “Some things I prefer to keep to myself, that is all.” He doesn't like to burden any of the Chargers with his problems, prefers to keep his troubles to himself. The Bull manages to drag it out of him, and that's for the best, but he doesn't bring these things up with Krem, Dalish, Skinner, or any of the others. Grim, sometimes, he talks to, but only because he knows the near-silent man will keep his secrets unto the grave, even if he does one day choose to put voice to his thoughts.

“Still,” Krem says. “You're so bloody inscrutable all the time, and I never want to ask. Some things upset you, and I don't want to be the cause of that.”

Fenris thinks back to the last time an offhand comment had triggered a vicious memory of one of Danarius's punishments. As Hawke once had, the Chargers have come to know the look that comes across Fenris's face when he's remembering, and all of them had been concerned. “I would never blame you,” he says. “You know that.” That time, it had been Skinner, but Krem had done it once or twice too. All of the Chargers had, and though in the aftermath of memory Fenris is often harsh and distant, he always apologizes to them when he is recovered. They never accept the apologies, never consider them necessary, though Fenris hates that he has been cruel when they have all been so kind.

“I know,” Krem says. “Even so. You can come to me if you're troubled about something.”

“I know,” Fenris echoes. He reaches forward and grabs Krem's hand, tangles their fingers together. This touch is a common one between them, and an easy thing for Fenris to offer. The only person who can touch his neck is the Iron Bull, and even arms and wrists can be uncomfortable when he's in a certain mood. But he can always take Krem's hand, clasp it between his own or twine their fingers as now. With Krem, even more than the other Chargers, Fenris finds it easy to be close. There is no magic in his blood the make the markings spark, none of the broad roughness of masculine palms. Skinner is the only other exception to those rules, but she is far less tactile than Fenris. “You are one of the best friends I've ever had, Krem. I – I do not ever want to ruin this. I try to keep you separate from my problems because something I don't  _ want _ someone to do something, not even to listen. Sometimes I must work through my troubles on my own. Still, if I ever need anything, I promise, I will come to you first.”

“Thank you,” Krem says, and steps a little closer. There's a moment of perfect quiet, only breath between them, and then without any further speech they disengage from each other and follow in Bull's footsteps out the door.

 

“You did  _ what _ ?”

“I spelled you to stay asleep,” Anders says. Marian narrows her eyes at him. She's still sleep-rumpled, but she's never felt so awake in her life. Sixteen hours of magically forced sleep will do that to a person, she thinks.

“ _ Why? _ ”

“I-” Anders pauses, and she grits her teeth.

“Anders.”

“I'm sorry,” he says. “I went to find the Chargers. It was an accident, mostly- I stumbled across them. They grabbed me, questioned me, and let me go. With the caveat that I not let you pursue them. I figured keeping you asleep would be the easiest way to do that.”

Marian considers burying her face in her hands. The Chargers are gone, then. She's sure she could find out which way they want, and yet. “I'm furious,” she tells Anders, though she's not sure that she really is. Still, it feels good to express it. “You - you know how much this means to me. How much  _ he _ means to me. How can I know you aren't lying?”

“I swear it,” he says. Justice's light burns blue beneath his skin, and she knows - the part of him that is the spirit would not abide the breaking of an oath. “I swear, Marian - Hawke. Hawke. They left, and demanded that you not follow. I'm not trying to hurt you with this.”

“Did you see him?” she asks. “Did you speak to him?”

“Briefly,” Anders says. His earnest look turns to an uncomfortable one, but Marian frankly couldn't care. She leans forward, her hands on her knees, an intent light in the blue of her eyes. “He seemed well. He seemed happy, as much as he could when looking at me - he still hates me, in case you were wondering. But he told the Qunari to spare my life. Something's changed in him, and he's... better, I suppose.”

He's withholding something, Marian thinks. “Is that all?” she presses, and he shifts.

“He said he wasn't sure he was ready to face you. I'm not sure what that meant.”

Marian closes her eyes. “Fine,” she tells him. “Get out of here, Anders. Just for a while, until I can forgive you for keeping him from me. Even if it  _ was  _ his choice.”

“Of course,” Anders says quietly, and leaves their room. She has no idea where he goes. Still, she finds she cannot care. She doesn't care about anything Anders does, where he goes, who he speaks to. Except Fenris. If she hadn't gotten to see Fenris, Anders shouldn't have gotten to see him either. That little bit of fairness at least the universe should have provided for her, but it didn't, and now she's here once more, in the thin light of dawn, in crumpled robes, alone. Always alone, for all that she has never been without companions. Without Fenris by her side, his company so unwavering, she has felt bereft for what seems like years, though she knows it's been a year at the most since he was taken. Less, surely. She's not kept close track of time. It was too hard, at the beginning, when she was still so freshly wounded by his loss, and since then there hasn't been a point. Just endless running, from the Chantry, from her past, even from her own friends. She could return to Kirkwall, she thinks. Her status would protect her.

But Marian cannot leave Anders. He's more stable now, yes, but he's still a desperately lonely creature at heart, and he's still her friend. She can't abandon him like everyone else has; she cannot leave him an outcast and on his own once more. She doesn't know whether it would unbalance him, if it would drive him to suicide, or if he would simply carry on, wandering the world and running from the consequences of his actions forever.

Marian's not sure she can run any more. She's so tired- tired of chasing, of sleeping on hard ground or in shitty inn beds, of pretending to be anything but what she is. She's a mage, and proud of it. Even with Fenris she'd refused to disguise that part of herself, and now that mages are finally seizing their freedom, she's more bound than ever. That seems wrong. Once, she had wanted to see the Circles torn down almost as much as Anders had, in the face of her lover's opinions, her mother's caution, even her own temperate nature. She'd not wanted to see anyone suffer. And now, maybe more than ever, mages all over Thedas are fighting and suffering for Anders's actions, for the cause that is almost more his than theirs. Some of them are willing to revolt, to kill their captors and flee or stand and fight, but many are unwilling or unable; children, the elderly and infirm, the broken ones who have no spirit left. They need a protector, someone to stand for them, to help them in the face of this unstoppable blaze that is burning down the institution that has sheltered and chained them both. They need a Champion.

Marian takes a slow breath, and rises from the bed. Her robes are a mess, wrinkled and stained, and she resolves to procure coin to get better ones. She's done with going without a staff. Anders, too, should be able to bend the full force of his magic, and damn to the Void anyone who would dare come after him. What he had done may not have been right, but it was Just, and for now that was all that mattered. Questions of right and wrong can come when they are burying the bodies. For now, she will be the Champion once more, if it takes months or years or a lifetime, and Anders is  _ damn well  _ coming with her. 

 

_ Maybe I'll see you again some day,  _ an echo of thought across a world. There's a whisper on the wind that sounds like curiosity and tastes like change, something about divergent roads in yellow trees, something about a world on fire. Somewhere, ships are passing unawares. Now is not the time, and maybe the time will be never; only time will tell.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the end, my friends! Well. Sort of. I've got to change the summary on this story, because right now it's terrible, and I'm going to post the first chapter of the next major part of this series, Time Will Tell, immediately after this chapter goes up. This has been a super wild ride, and I'm honestly so glad that Bow and Bend has turned into the incredible monster that it has - I've had a great time writing it, reading all of your reviews, and chatting with you about it.
> 
> Comments and kudos are welcome as always. Please go on to the next part and read and subscribe to that, if you're still up for more.


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